Google Home is here

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Google Home is over. No indication of what the price might be.

This presentation has shown Amazon what they need to add to Alexa to stay ahead of the game.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by kennyc

They're only the most profitable company on the books at the moment having surpassed Apple again. They are the leaders in real-world AI and many other areas. You seem to miss the point of what taking research risks is about.

Seems there's more sour grapes to your claims than anything.

I'll leave it at that.

Technically, they only passed Apple for a few hours, but hey even being the second most profitable company is pretty good.

Google and Amazon have very different goals and views on how to do business. Both are quite successful. Kind of silly to criticize one or the other because they don't follow the one true path.

The real issue with home automation is that the market is fragmented and it's difficult to find a solution that does everything well. I am currently using wemo light switches for my external lighting (it's nice to turn on the lights via my iPhone when I drive up) but it doesn't work with multi-switch lights. The first company that can offer something that just works in most case should win big. Of course, the proof is in the puddling.

[wodin]

When Alexa doesn't know an answer, Google Now nearly always does; which usually elicits the response "Stupid B***" from me.

Spoiler:

The latest was "When was "Top Gun" filmed? Alexa didn't know but Google did!

With the announcement of Google Home, I'm beginning to regret my rather substantial investment in Alexa.

[tubemonkey]

Since I use my Echo for music and audiobooks, Home offers nothing that would entice me to jump ship. Home automation features are something I'm not the least bit interested in.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Google Home is over. No indication of what the price might be.

This presentation has shown Amazon what they need to add to Alexa to stay ahead of the game.

And Apple.
They too are reportedly working on an answer to Echo, probably as an update to Apple TV.
(We might even hear from Microsoft.)

We'll see where things stand in November. Six months is a long time in consumer electronics, especially in nascent businesses.

[Conan46]

I think you guys are vastly underestimating Google. Google Now is already more useful to me than Echo will ever be. Wait until you can make phone calls with the thing without picking up a phone. Google Fiber, Project Fi, Hangouts, Google Search (second to none), Chromecast, the entire Android ecosystem. My only concern is how long it has taken Google to get this started. This was a no-brainer. I'll be curious to see how open Google is with this, it could take off fast if they make it dead simple for others to get on board.

The Verge has a good article about it:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11...istant-io-2016

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Conan46

...
The Verge has a good article about it:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11...istant-io-2016

Thanks for the link Conan, it's obviously slanted toward Google, but informative none the less.

[wodin]

Here's one, also from the Verge that's perhaps a bit less biased.

[tubemonkey]

Every time I see the title of this thread "Google Home", I keep reading it as "Going Home", a song by Ten Years After

Spoiler:

[tubemonkey]

I'd definitely be interested in this as an app. That way I could request music verbally from my phone or tablet. I also wish Amazon would do the same and produce a fully featured Alexa app.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The motorola deals cost them over $10B in losses.
Think they've made that much net off Android?

Oracle says Google has made $22 billion net on Android, Google says they've made nearly nothing -- maybe half a billion. But Motorola didn't cost them $10 billion in losses either. When they bought Motorola for $12.5 billion, Motorola had $3 billion in the bank. Then they sold off one division of Motorola for $2.5 billion -- so they we're down to $7 billion. Then they sold their phone division for $3 billion to Lenovo, so that leaves $4 billion in "losses" -- except Google retains Motorola's huge patent library. But, more than that, Motorola's brief ownership of Motorola allowed them to drive the design of Android phones. Before Google's Moto G (the first high quality, inexpensive Android) the phone makers were making pure crap Android phones that could barely get out of their way. By competing with the Moto G (and later the even cheaper Moto E) Google was able to force Android phone makers to use higher spec CPUs that could run their "ad-rich" Android phones. So I think Google got a lot more out of their Motorola purchase than Microsoft got from their Nokia purchase. Microsoft recently wrote off $7.6 billion for that failure.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

We'll see where things stand in November. Six months is a long time in consumer electronics, especially in nascent businesses.

I'm guessing that, since Amazon was first to market with their device, they'll still have the lion's share of the market for at least several years.

[kennyc]

Here's a couple of pieces from The Verge:

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreak...orst-nightmare

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11...ogle-home-look

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I think you guys are vastly underestimating Google. Google Now is already more useful to me than Echo will ever be. Wait until you can make phone calls with the thing without picking up a phone. Google Fiber, Project Fi, Hangouts, Google Search (second to none), Chromecast, the entire Android ecosystem. My only concern is how long it has taken Google to get this started. This was a no-brainer. I'll be curious to see how open Google is with this, it could take off fast if they make it dead simple for others to get on board.

The Verge has a good article about it:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11...istant-io-2016

So is this going to be as successful as Google Glass?

Shari

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by shalym

So is this going to be as successful as Google Glass?

Shari

I'll say once more, in order to innovate you must have (perhaps many) failures. Google recognizes this and doesn't hide it behind closed doors like the second most valuable company.


P.S. it really does look like an Air Freshner.