Techniques are described herein for automated assistants that search various alternative corpora for information. In various implementations, a method may include receiving, by an automated assistant via an input component of a first client device, a free form input, wherein the free form input includes a request for specific information; searching a general purpose corpus of online documents to obtain a first set of candidate response(s) to the request for specific information; searching a user-specific corpus of active document(s) to obtain a second set of candidate response(s) to the request for specific information; comparing the first and second sets of candidate responses; based on the comparing, selecting a given response to the request for specific information from the first or second set; and providing, by the automated assistant, output indicative of the given response.