Google Home : The Ultimate Speaker Google I/O 2016

The Verdge

For the past year and a half, the tech world has been getting away from Amazon's surprise announcement of the Echo. Now, Google is finally doing what everybody wished it to do: unharness a contender. It's called Google Home, associate degreed it's coming out later this year for an one value.

Mario Queiroz is the executive behind the project. His title, VP of product management, is the sort you hear plenty. But you recognize him higher because the man who has launched the sole truly successful living room product Google has ever launched: Chromecast.

You can consider Home as his next act. It's essentially what you'd expect if you were trying for Google to form associate degree Echo contender. It's a small speaker you plug into the wall with always-listening, far-field microphones that can hear you from across the area. It'll answer your queries, play your music, and control some of your home automation gadgets. To hear Queiroz tell it, the Home is better at the most of these things than the Echo.

Physically, the Home may be a small, approachable little cylinder with associate degree angular  high. The speaker bows out a little, and overall it's quite cute. Like Google's OnHub router (which, really, probably ought to have additionally had Google Home's capabilities if Google were smarter), it has a modular case that you simply will customise with completely different base shells to match your interior decoration. It will even have some light-emitting diode lights that dance around slightly to allow you to recognize it's operating.

It's not portable, but the profit of perpetually being blocked in is that Google will build a a lot of powerful speaker. Quieroz says that it "really fills the room" and that it'll have "strong bass and clear highs." That's necessary, because one of the most use cases Google is foreseeing here is taking note of music. The Echo isn't nice at that.

Another thing the Echo is not nice at: having a lot of than one. But Google Home is designed with multiple rooms and speakers in mind from the beginning. And because it's using the essential cast standard, you can discuss with any speaker and tell it to play music on alternative speakers, just like you'll be able to with Google solid Audio. It will work with Google Play Music, of course, but it ought to additionally be ready to handle the other service that supports Google solid, like Spotify.



Compatibility with Cast provides it another sensible ability: it will speak to the Chromecast you have got blocked into your TV, playing YouTube clips and something else you'll be able to suppose to raise.

Unfortunately, the Home won't support multiple Google accounts at launch, but the company says that may are available in time.

The Home obviously permits you to raise Google queries. Queiroz says that Google put a heap of your time into puzzling over however Google Home ought to answer your queries. Its responses will be optimized for audio, giving just enough data while not droning on too long.

There is one area wherever Home may not be as capable because the Echo, however, and that's once it involves extensibility and compatibility with alternative devices and services. Google has chosen not to open up a developer API for its assistant or for this device just nevertheless. Instead, Google wants to take it slow to make out the ways in which its assistant will act because the interpreter between your natural method of speaking and therefore the method that bots ought to be spoken to.

Quieroz admits that the Echo's wide array of skills is neat but says "then you start obtaining deeper and it does not work o.k., then you're type of unsuccessful. And I think that happens with Alexa typically."

Instead, Google Home is progressing to work with a smaller set of home automation devices — Google wouldn't say that, but it can embrace a minimum of some thermostats and lights. And it will be ready to do all the things that Google's voice assistant will presently do (plus maybe slightly a lot of, we have a tendency to'll know once we get an opportunity to essentially attempt it). Fortunately for Google, that's quite a heap — thanks in no tiny half to the data Graph. It's a reasonably super database that understands thousands of "entities" and their relevance each other. So if you raise for a basketball player's jersey variety, Google can simply provide you the solution then stand at the prepared for a lot of connected queries without having you to run it through the present context.

Not having all the Echo's third-party abilities would possibly place some off from Google Home, but Quieroz says he is not disquieted — in reality he appears longing for the head-to-head competition. "We're competing feature for feature in most of the areas. And in the areas that actually bear on the buyer, we're going to do an improved job."