Google has announced that they have developed an Amazon Echo competitor called Google Home, the device is a virtual agent that answers simple questions and carries out basic tasks.
Google has long had voice assistant tech in its Android phones — beckoned by the words “Okay, Google” — that many in the industry see as leading the pack. Amazon on the other-hand has been the only company that has been able to develop and release a new breed of consumer product using their voice-agent.
Google Home will sync to a smartphone version called Assistant, and links to streaming device Chromecast and smart home brand Nest. It can be personalized with different materials and colors, and may let users ask a broader range of questions than the Echo can manage, since Google’s digital assistant connects to the company’s powerful search platform.
“We’re creating a new set of entry points into the conversation that you can have with Google,” Scott Huffman, a search engineering executive at Google, said in an interview, “that are explicitly focused on this idea of having a natural conversation.”
In the last three years Google has not released a new piece of hardware, instead issuing small incremental upgrades to their various smartphones, tablets. It is about time that they get in on the groundfloor of a new product category since they missed out on social media.
Google Home will be released late this year.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
