In addition to it’s new Google Assistant service, Google has revealed it will be once again entering your home space as Google Home is expected to launch later this year. It plays music and can control smart home devices, like lights or the Nest thermostat. Now it seems those rumors may be true but the actual consumer product will be called, Google Home.
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The Home will be available later this year, though no pricing or availability have been announced yet.
The company promised at Google I/O that it had put a lot of thought into the hardware. Google is fixing this situation with Assistant, a new virtual helper that will not only tell you the timings of your flight but will also probably share a couple of jokes with you.
“We want users to have an ongoing two-way dialog with Google”, said Pichai.
Looking at all these features, you’d have to say that the real advantage Google has over Amazon in this department is access to Google Now’s AI which has proven itself to be one of, if not, the best out there at the moment. Google chief executive Sundar Pichai asked the app to suggest movies near him that he’d enjoy, bringing up a list of recommendations.
“It is truly the moment of mobile”, Pichai. Of course, Amazon already has its own product Echo/Alexa for this and Facebook and Apple also have similar products but it’s the voice command element that’s crucial to consider.
This feature even works for photos.
The tech industry has been abuzz since news has leaked that Google will be diving into the voice-activated home device market.
Siri doesn’t yet have a presence on the Mac, however (though that could change at WWDC), much less an Echo or Google Home-like appliance. However, Google Home will come in several colors, which can be swapped out by the user; the Echo is only available in black. And it will work in phones, wearables, Google’s new messaging app Allo, the Google Home smart hub, and even in cars.
It isn’t clear if Google Home is a serious venture or just another Google beta project that might be left on the wayside.
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Like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home supports far-field voice recognition, allowing it to pick up your voice whether you’re standing right next to it or across the room. This is said to be better at understanding context and able to offer better proactive suggestions to users as a result. Whether normal people want to use virtual assistants or not remains to be seen, but Google has as good a shot as anyone to convince them when its Assistant comes out later this year.
