Called Google Home, the Internet-connected speaker listens for your voice commands to play music or control lights and thermostats in the home.
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Google says that unlike other home assistants, Home will work with other speakers in the house too. If Google Home meets set expectations, we think Google deserves all the chest thumping for the Google Home, except maybe the credit for the concept should go to Amazon.
Google Home is a small unobtrusive speaker device that is delicately shaped like the top of a wine glass. Echo’s anything you want it to be, including an elaborate kitchen timer, the best radio you’ve ever had, a shopping assistant, and so on. “Google Home also enables connections to TVs and other non-intelligent speakers with a dongle and Echo can not”. Google’s assistant has lots of functions spanning services and platforms, Pichai added: “Think of the assistant as an ambient experience that extends across devices – Computing evolving beyond phones”. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are to be more assertive.
For now, the Assistant will also power two new Google products – Home and messaging apps Allo & Duo.
All eyes in the tech world are turned toward San Francisco today as Google unveils its latest and greatest at its annual I/O conference.
Google did not disclose pricing on Home devices. Google just announced an Amazon Echo clone. It’s tethered to your Google account so you can access your calendar, email, and Google Play music, directly through Google Home.
The event kicked off with a keynote by CEO Sundar Pichai, held outdoors at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, giving it a festive Coachella vibe.
If it sounds similar to Google Now and Voice Search, that’s because it’s built on the same principles.
Google hasn’t released a great deal of information about Home, but a product page has been created where you can sign up to receive more details when they are available. This gives you complete control of all of these products through the Google Home unit. After all, Alexa and the Google Assistant are wondering. With Home, the bottle trapping Google’s genie has been smashed.
Along with Uber, other launch partners whose services will work with Google Home include Pandora, Spotify, OpenTable, Gett, Instacart, Grubhub, Mytaxi, TuneIn, HailO, WhatsApp, Saavn, Ticketmaster and more, reported TechCrunch. On the plus side, also unlike Amazon’s home-based AI hub Echo, Google Home will come with a number of design customization options to match your particular style of décor.
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“Every conversation is different and we’re working hard to do this for billions of users around the world”, he said during the conference.
