>"When searching within an app, favor results from that app"
vs
>"When searching within an app, favor results from a related app"
There is a big difference between these two things. "Youtube" is not the same as "Youtube Music" in the same way that "Xbox" is not the same as "Xbox Live".
As p49k explained it - if you were trying to send an email from YouTube would you expect Gmail to come up or your preferred email app? What if Gmail was renamed to "Youtube Mail"? Would that change your expected behavior?
Sending an email is a different interaction than doing voice search.
Sending an email is an explicit intent - open whatever app I use to send emails.
Searching is an open query - find the most relevant results. What results are most relevant is subjective, hence why you would give the user a choice for what results to favor.
The separation between Youtube and Youtube Music is a technical minutia, they're both Youtube just different apps. If you want a technical solution, Roku should probably implement a search API such that doing a voice search would let the Roku query whatever app is currently running for results. Then any app can provide more relevant, context aware results.
>Sending an email is a different interaction than doing voice search.
Going from watching videos to playing music is a different interaction than doing voice search.
>Sending an email is an explicit intent - open whatever app I use to send emails.
Using a global voice commands (not search) has explicit behavior - use whatever app I have set to default for the functionality I am requesting. "Play Stairway to Heaven" should use my default music app. Note that "voice commands" is different from "voice search" in this context and is the alleged problem.
>Searching is an open query - find the most relevant results.
If I use Spotify as my default music app it is because I trust their music search more than YouTube Music. Otherwise YouTube Music would be my default music app.
There is also a massive contextual difference between a global Voice Search (using the Voice search icon on the Roku remote: it searches Roku) and using the Speech to Text option that may appear when already searching within a search field (which uses the search field of the app itself, in this case: Youtube)
>The separation between Youtube and Youtube Music is a technical minutia, they're both Youtube just different apps.
Google deciding there is a difference between the two means that there is a difference between the two for both a marketing perspective and whatever minor technical differences there are. If there were no differences there would not be a YouTube Music app and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
You're basically making the argument for why this should be a user preference.
Do I want the current app I'm using to influence the result of a voice command or not.
Unfortunately the line between voice commands and voice search is often fuzzy. Lines like this:
> Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open
make it unclear if it's talking about a search or a command.
Ideally Roku would implement a more fine grained API where a user can set permissions/preferences on an app by app basis, similar to Android and iOS permissions APIs and especially how notifications are handled.
Either way if Roku's allegations definitely don't paint Google in a good light here. It just seems like there could be more to this story.
