Why I chose Google Home over Amazon Alexa
Small things make big differences.
Amazon Alexa was our first voice assistant that we had. We loved it so much that we bought a couple more to leave in the other rooms of our house. Our kids would run up to it and ask questions all the time for the weather and spelling. And they would even confess their love to the device. The device had a pretty good speaker and we listened to a lot of music with it. It was a great standalone device to use in the house, and we absolutely loved it.
And then came Google Home. Google Home was inconvenient at first because there were so many devices that were not compatible. Most of the smart devices already supported integration with Amazon Alexa, and Google was playing the catch up game. We found Google Home interesting because it also understood multiple languages. But, of all, the greatest thing in the early days, was that it worked with Chromecast Audio.
I had a Chromecast Audio device lying around that I got from a couple of years ago (probably from Google I/O), that I hooked up with our home audio system, which plays in our kitchen, living room and backyard. It was previously connected to Apple’s Airport Express, which did the same thing but could only be controlled by my phone, and I tried using a bluetooth dongle with IFTT but didn’t work well. The Chromecast Audio still didn’t serve much purposes since “I” was the one who had to open my phone to stream the music, and I wasn’t home most of the time since I was at work. But as it connected to Google Home, this truly became a family device that everybody was using, and we started listening to more and more music than we did before. It was pretty awesome that this small dongle switched my old audio system into a smart device just like that.
Having multiple options, we were playing different music on each of the devices, but naturally I thought it would be really useful if all of the devices could be playing the same music synchronized. That was when I was forced to choose which platform I should further invest and attach ourselves to, the Amazon connected home ecosystem or the Google connected home ecosystem. I actually had more Amazon Alexa devices than Google Home devices lying around at home, so I should have chosen Amazon, but I chose Google. Both companies were giving these devices away through bundles, and I knew I would get more in the future.
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It was an amazing experience when I played music on all my Google devices synchronously after grouping the smart devices together. This wasn’t capable by Amazon back then and it was the key factor of my choice to go with Google. And by then, Google had caught up with being compatible with most of the devices, and for the ones that weren’t, I could just use IFTTT as a workaround.
Also when I was choosing my solution for our front door camera, although Ring was the leader, I chose to go with Nest Hello, mainly due to the looks, although the continuous streaming capability was attractive. And for the HVAC control, Nest was the best looking again. Google won again because of the aesthetics.
Another big reason why I chose Google was also because of the voice recognition technology. I personally didn’t have a lot of major issues with either Amazon Alexa or Google Home recognizing my speaking, but I noticed that Google Home was a “little” smarter. A little smarter meaning, recognizing our sentences a “little” better, and recognizing other languages and being able to translate. We also speak Korean in our home, and the kids would go up to Google Home to ask for translation every now and then too. And, when I thought of AI in general, I always thought that Google had a lead over Amazon, and thought the possibility of Google eventually winning was much higher than Amazon due to the massive amount of data they have been accumulating over the years. The Assistant app that Google had was pretty neat, and I used it pretty often, where I barely used the Alexa app.
I knew I would be stuck with this system as the years go by, and sticking with Google seemed to be a pretty safe choice. Even from the beginning, the potential candidates were only one of the tech giants that I frequently used: Apple, Google, or Amazon. It’s so unfortunate that Apple didn’t really fully pursue being the platform for home, although they already owned the most important piece that’s in the people’s palm. My love for Google’s hardware has grown quite a bit over the years, as I’ve bought the Nest, Nest Thermostat, Nest Hub, Nest Hello, Nest Cameras, Nest Smoke Alarms, and Google Wifi. It has come to the point that I started thinking “Maybe Google wants to win the Android vs iPhone war, utilizing the surrounding tactic by owning the echo system, rather than going straight to the heart and attacking the iPhone.” I’ve tried Apple’s HomePod device and unfortunately it only works as a speaker, and Apple TV has only been working as a streaming device to me. They’ve lost so much market opportunity that I don’t know if they would ever be able to catch up (or if they want to). And through the years, I’ve also considered a couple of times switching from using an iPhone to an Android device, thinking it would be so easy if I could just say “Ok Google” to my phone instead of talking to the Google Home or taking an additional step saying “Hey Siri Ok Google”. If Google strikes it with a good enough phone some time in the near future, I can see this happening to me.
Amazon, with the acquisition of Ring, has definitely been moving the right direction, and has been butting heads with Google in this space. Amazon still wins on the TV front as the Fire TV has won most users heart over Google’s Chromecast. Fire TV is still my favorite goto TV streaming device, that I carry around on every trip I go. The TV will definitely become one of the biggest battlegrounds that Google will have to catch up on, and I can’t wait to see the new Chromecast that they have been preparing too.
Although Amazon has had leapstart in controlling the smart home, I’ve been a big believer that Google will win in the longer run. Google has more pieces required down the line to win as they control more important pieces of software that people use everyday: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Photos to mention a couple. As more display capabilities will be added to smart home devices, Google will have the upperhand, and as AI becomes more important, again Google will win again. Amazon is the leader in hardware now, and I think they will continue to hold a significant market share, but the people who want more lean more towards Google, unless something groundbreaking happens.
Nest Aware, Google’s home security plan, just announced new pricing at $60 per year for the whole household, which is huge discount from the $50 base plus $30 per additional pricing they used to have. This was great news to hear as a user who has invested in Google cameras over the years.
Anyways, it looks like the best integration between hardware and software will be done by Google, and that’s why I chose Google for my home.
