Google Home

Nightmare for Amazon Echo

Finally, Google has announced the making of its very own home Artificially intelligent assistant device, which mainly challenges Echo (Amazon) and another open source alternative-Mycroft. Let’s have a look at the biggest announcement for consumers made at the Google I/O 2016:-

Design

It’s built on the same fundamentals as Echo — a wireless speaker base combined with a voice assistant, without any buttons at all (Completely voice based). The speaker base, which entirely covers the bottom part, can be customized to any pattern or colour design to suit its surroundings, and is changeable, just like laptop skins. The upper part, on the other hand, is an elegantly beautiful plain white cylindrical section, with its top having an LED display.

The Base is customizable, No buttons can be seen.

The Display (on top) shows Google’s Colours.

What’s about it?

It’s a competitor to Echo, and thus has to have an edge over it. The edge, in this case is Google’s AI. It can directly serve queries from Google, and one can even have a natural conversation with it, with specific contexts (thanks to Google’s natural language processing and Machine Learning). It is capable of playing Music from most of the streaming services and also look up the local libraries of your device (whether it is Android or IOS). It can control almost all of the smart devices in your home- TVs, phones, lights, thermostats, fridge, washing machine and any other smart thing. It has a multi room playback feature, by which it can control multiple speakers in the house, and can also play the same song across rooms with different speakers, in sync. It will be capable of booking services, calling a cab, almost everything that can be done with a smartphone. It is also integrated with the Chromecast, thus, one can get a playback on the biggest screen in the house, directly by asking Home. The Home speaker would be accessible over wifi and thus be connected to all the other smart devices at home.

Features

1. Completely voice based assistant.
2. Access all of Google — messages, mail, events, appointments, queries, conversation, in one place.
3. Play music directly, from most of the streaming services, or a local library on any device.
4. Support for both Android and IOS.
5. Control multiple speakers in home, and thus play in multiple rooms, simultaneously.
6. Control all the other smart devices in the house from one point — Light to TV, Fridge to Washing Machine.
7. Have a natural conversation with the AI assistant, which serves queries, gets things done(book tickets and shows, orders food, etc.), and provides entertainment.
8. Integrated with Chromecast, thus display content directly to any screen.
9. Sleek and beautiful design, customizable, to suit its surroundings.

Launch Date

Google hasn’t clarified about the launch date, but has stated that it can be expected ‘later this year’.

Where’s this heading?

With this, Google has made it clear that it wants to be everyone’s go-to destination for queries and wants to be integrated into every sphere of life — from smartphones to living room to TV, from booking tickets to eating out or in home — and has also reinforced its superiority in AI research. It builds upon the user’s data, and wants to reach a huge audience, to get more and more data and thus serve better. While it’s good for many, it raises privacy issues and questions for others. Whatever maybe anyone’s stand on the issue, one can’t ignore the increasing role that AI is playing and the center stage it will take in our lives. What do YOU think, do let us know…