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My company would like to distribute devices containing preinstalled Google Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine, together with some downloaded offline voice data.

Can we do this without the need to acquire any additional licenses/permissions?

My findings in this matter are insufficient, but I'm going to present them here anyway, to avoid confusion:

  • Android TTS framework is a part of Android Open Source Project, licensed under the terms of Apache 2.0 license, making it perfect for free distribution
  • The framework allows multiple TTS engines, including Google TTS, which comes as a part of the operating system installed by devices' OEM.
  • As far, as I understand, the usage of Google TTS is governed by Google Terms of Service, which does not say much about preinstalling parts of otherwise available online Google software or its data On my device
  • As a user, I can go to Settings and download any of the available Google languages for offline use.
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    This is a fun one... I'm not familiar at all with android development, but I would assume that if something is built in, then it's available for your use. The terms of service likely generally applies to users of the end application. How do you use the TTS (Sorry, I don't know what that is...)? Also, do you have a link to those terms and conditions? That might give some insight :) – Zizouz212 Mar 10 '16 at 0:31
  • @Zizouz212 Here is a link to Google Terms and Conditions: google.com/policies/terms TTS is a library that allows other applications (including the ones we make) to transform written text to speech. – ohaleck Mar 10 '16 at 9:51
  • IANAL, but I don't see any problem with what you're trying to do. I assume this is like setting-up the device before being distributed, which you have access to the feature publicly. – Andrew T. Mar 24 '16 at 4:39

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