I remember laughing at people (in the late '90s) who tried to search the Internet with English-language queries: how do i cook pancakes without butter vs pancakes +"no butter"

Anyway, these days I'd obviously be wrong. I'm so impressed with the strides Google has taken to NLP, and I am fully expecting them to beat everyone to Strong AI. And why not? They know that the better they are, the better their advertising revenue will be. And they know that once they get there, even if ads are no longer profitable having the world's only AI will be incomprehensibly popular.

My one problem with this article is the last line:

"They're still not approaching the conversations you'd have as a teenager."

Google hasn't yet approached "the conversations" you'd have with a 5 year old. While Google may understand a 5-year old's conversation, it certainly couldn't participate it in and reply back to the kid.