Report: Google introducing software tools at I/O to help developers build chat bots that run in messaging apps, in strategy similar to Microsoft's
SAN FRANCISCO — Google is creating tools for software developers to build chat bots that run inside messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger …
Context & Ripple Effects
The chat-bot land grab of early 2016 is getting its second big entrant. Facebook spent the spring building out Messenger as a bot platform — first giving developers early access to a chat SDK in January, then launching the full Messenger platform with chatbots alongside a machine-learning Bot Engine at F8 in April. Google, meanwhile, had reportedly been building its own chatbot-capable messaging app for over a year (per the WSJ reporting from December).
Today's report closes that loop: rather than waiting on its own app alone, Google is bringing developer tooling to I/O so bots can run inside existing messaging apps — a strategy USA Today notes mirrors Microsoft's. The significance is that Google is choosing to meet developers where users already are, not just inside a yet-unlaunched destination app.
First-order effects
- Developers building Messenger bots since April now get a second major distribution target at I/O, letting one codebase reach both Facebook's and Google's messaging audiences.
- Google's long-in-development chatbot messaging app gains an external developer ecosystem it would otherwise have had to seed entirely on its own.
Second-order effects
- Facebook and Microsoft now face direct competition for the same bot developers, forcing all three to compete on tooling quality, ML capabilities, and revenue terms rather than user reach alone.
- Brands experimenting with commerce and booking bots — the use cases Facebook's SDK targeted — can hedge across platforms, which pressures each platform owner to make its channel indispensable early.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, messaging apps consolidate into the default interface layer for services — search, shopping, support — displacing standalone apps for transactional tasks, with platform owners controlling discovery and ranking of bots.
- Google's arc here is instructive: the same company reportedly exploring customizable, celebrity-modeled chatbots in 2024 shows the 2016 tooling was an early step toward conversation itself becoming a product surface, not just a feature.
The trend: Messaging platforms are being rebuilt as bot operating systems, with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft racing to sign up developers before conversational interfaces harden into the default way users transact.