Taking on Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Echo, Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google previewed an artificial intelligence-powered, voice-activated home device at its Google I/O developer’s conference Wednesday. “That’s why we’re creating Google Home, a device we’re releasing later this year”.
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Elsewhere at the conference, Google unveiled improvements to its Android mobile-operating system, including a feature that allows users to get the speed and features of apps without having to download the apps themselves. Such a device would represent Google’s response to the growing popularity of Amazon’s Echo, a cylinder-like device equipped with speakers and an Internet-connected microphone that enables a virtual assistant called Alexa to interact with its users.
Formerly codenamed Chirp, Google Home is a voice activated virtual agent capable of connecting to devices around the home and completing basic tasks like playing music or searching Google.
With Google Home and Google Assistant, the company is indeed progressing forward towards a positive direction in the future. It plays music and can control smart home devices, like lights or the Nest thermostat.
But Alexa can’t, say, read you an incoming email coming into your Gmail account, locate your Android phone, translate a conversation in real-time, send directions to your phone, stream a video to your TV, or any of the millions of things Google can do that we all take for granted.
The other new thing about Google Assistant is that it’s going to expand beyond Google Now’s mostly smartphone-based hardware to work pretty much anywhere. Both Allo and Duo are based on your phone number, so you can communicate with anyone regardless of whether they’re on Android or iOS.
Although the upcoming products will offer some unique features, they mostly painted a picture of a company scrambling to catch up with its rivals.
The first big announcement was the Google Home. It can also hook up with other Google Home/Chromecast devices with multi-room support, so you can say something like “Play TwoChainz in the living room”. It is about time that they get in on the groundfloor of a new product category since they missed out on social media.
Daydream is a new virtual reality ecosystem that will be made available to all comers, duplicating a strategy that worked well for Google after it fell behind Apple following the iPhone’s debut almost a decade ago. “It builds on all our years of investment in deeply understanding users’ questions”, said Pichai.
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The device will be available later this year.
