Both DialogFlow and Google Cloud NL (Natural Language) are under Google, and to me they are very similar. Does anyone know any specific on their differences and whether Google will consolidate into one product? If I am a new developer to use the features, which one I should pick?
I search around and cannot find any satisfactory answers.
Thanks!
While they are vaguely similar, since they both take text inputs, the results from each are somewhat different.
By default, GCNL doesn't require you to provide any training phrases at all. It takes any sorts of textual input and lets you do things such as sentiment analysis, parts of speech analysis, and sentence structure analysis on the phrase.
If you are expecting very free-form inputs, then GCNL is very appropriate for what you want.
On the other hand, Dialogflow requires that you provide training phrases that are associated with each Intent and possible parameters for some of the words in those phrases. It then tries to take the input and determine which Intent matches that input and how the parameters match.
If you have a more narrow set of commands, and just want a way to more flexibly have people issue those commands in a conversation, Dialogflow is more appropriate.
It is unlikely the two will ever be merged. Dialogflow is well tuned to make conversational interfaces easier to develop, while GCNL is more open-ended, and thus more complex.