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Google Cloud launches new machine learning API into open beta

The Natural Language API enables sentiment and syntax analysis, as well as entity recognition.
Written by Stephanie Condon, Senior Writer
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Building on the machine learning tools it unveiled earlier this year, Google Cloud Platform on Wednesday announced it's launching two machine learning APIs into open beta.

The new Google Cloud Natural Language API allows a user to reveal the structure and meaning of text. Google promises support for a variety of languages, starting with English, Spanish, and Japanese.

In a separate blog post, Google demonstrated how the Natural Language API could be used to analyze stories from the New York Times. As one example, you could perform sentiment analyses on blocks of text with the API, run the results in a BigQuery table, and then visualize them with Google Data Studio:

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In another example, digital marketers could use the API's sentiment analysis capabilities to monitor online product reviews or customer calls to service centers. In addition to sentiment analysis, the API can be used for entity recognition (to label entities as a person, organization, location, etc.), as well as for syntax analysis.

Meanwhile, Google's Cloud Speech API is also entering open beta. Using the same voice recognition technology that powers Google Search, it gives you access to speech-to-text conversion in over 80 languages for apps and IoT devices. Google already has more than 5,000 companies signed up for Speech API alpha.

Google Cloud Platform also announced it is opening a west coast region in Oregon. It will initially offer Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Container Engine. The new region should reduce application latency anywhere from 30 percent to 80 percent for cities including Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

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