Google Home ready to take on Amazon's Echo

Deanna Wagner
04:58, Oct 8, 2016
Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.

The world's biggest tech company finally has a fitting rival. The most impressive the Search giant isn't something palpable. And that's why it has weaved its AI chops into each and every one of its products.

Google Home has the unique ability to connect to a nearby Chromecast or Chromecast Audio and route music and video to your speakers or TV, as seen in Google's keynote.

In all honesty people aren't wrong. "The hope is you can ask Alexa anything and it will be able to respond correctly, quickly and be able to be there", he said. It will tell you the weather, how long it will take you to get to work, what's on your calendar, and a news briefing from a source of your choice. "Facebook's doing the same thing through a different channel". "A lot of the day-to-day activities just get a lot easier - you want to book a restaurant, you want to book a trip". Here's all you need to know. Voice assistant devices (like most home-based appliances) aren't supposed to be personal for two important reasons. can also take care of daily tasks likebooking reservations and providingreal-time traffic information. You just have to give it some related information about the song.

But all that isn't what makes Home really powerful. Home can also act as an alarm clock to get you out of bed. It will even give you a briefing of what's to be done in the day. Home is backed by the Google Assistant, which has the potential to be much smarter than Alexa, and it's better integrated with the rest of the Google ecosystem - it can cast audio and video to other Google Cast devices, for example.

That's one reason why Google eventually wants the assistant on more devices, though the company now doesn't have plans to build directly into Android the way Siri is automatically included in Apple's mobile software.

The phones and speaker will serve as a showcase for Google's digital helper, Google Assistant. Because businesses can buy placement on Waze and Google Maps, there's no question that the treasure trove of textual and contextual data Google is mining through will be monetized somehow, and likely in incredible new ways. If you ask Home to stream something from YouTube, it will be able to pull it up on your TV screen without you having to press a button. But if you're enjoying these services, regularly depend on them and the you're complaining then you're being hypocritical. And to do that, you'll need more than one.

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Of course, also has access to Google's Web search, which means instant answers to a huge variety of questions, from the New England Patriots' season record (3-1) to the name of the Canadian prime minister (Justin Trudeau). The camera definitely ups the ante against Apple, with a DxOMark Mobile score of 89, the highest yet, and three points ahead of the iPhone 7.

We'll update when we hear more.

The point I am trying to make is that if you've become slave to a free service for years and now you're cribbing that it is exploiting you isn't fair. For most of us, it's simply worth considering that any move Google makes is a telling one for the state of the tech world at large.

However, with Google and Amazon competing directly via voice-activated speakers, there is vast potential for a push toward these two platforms in coming years. This will allow us to translate on the fly, even if the person asking the question doesn't know English.

How this stacks up against Apple's Siri will be the real test but Google's edge in search may be a differentiator.

The Android and iOS app lets you pause on children's devices, shows what is connected and exactly how much bandwidth is being used.

Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.


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