Just under a week before Google’s Launch Night In, Amazon is hosting a hardware event to discuss its latest smart home offerings. The retailer kicked off its announcement with a new line of Echo smart speakers that look exactly like the Nexus Q.
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Smart speakers have exploded in popularity for the past couple of years, and Google has seen a lot of growth, particularly this past year. Now, new market research suggests that Google has outsold Amazon for the first time ever…
Google Home, and Assistant speakers in general, have only been on the scene a fraction of the time that the Amazon Echo family has. However, Google’s devices are starting to pick up steam, and they’ve really made themselves known in the market…
Google and Amazon discounted their smart speakers so deeply in the holiday sales that they likely lost money on each unit, say analysts. Amazon discounted its Echo Dot to $29.99 in the run-up to the holidays, with the Google Home Mini also seen for the same price in various sales.
The two companies’ willingness to lose money on the hardware reveals their very different strategy to Apple with its upcoming HomePod speaker …
When Google Home launched, Amazon’s Alexa platform had a massive headstart in several areas. About a year later, though, I think it’s safe to say Google has turned the tables. Now, Alexa is catching up with Home, and today it’s brought over one of Home’s best new features — multi-user support.
As we approach the holiday season, we expect to hear about new products that will hit the market in time for buyers to snatch them for themselves or loved ones. Before today, we knew for sure that Google had plans to introduce the Home Mini at next week’s event. What we didn’t expect was for Amazon to announced an entire line of new Echo products. And on top of that, we exclusively reported that Google had plans to introduce a premium Home called the ‘Max’ (although we don’t know if that’s coming before the end of the year).
This holiday season, do you plan to buy any new Google Home or Amazon Echo products?
A week out from Google’s upcoming 10/4 event, Amazon hosted a surprise hardware event in Seattle. Alexa speakers and accessories took center stage with a new smaller and cheaper Echo, as well as an Echo Plus that doubles as a smart home hub.
In 2014, Google Glass founder and former head Babak Parviz left the X division to join Amazon as it began ramping up on hardware. The online retailer is now reportedly set to launch smart glasses that feature its Alexa assistant and a home security camera system as soon as this year.
Making a digital assistant that really does everything users want is pretty difficult. There are dozens upon dozens of features that everyone wants, so features are added over time. However, one thing that seems pretty obvious, if you ask me at least, is setting reminders. For whatever reason, though, both Amazon’s Echo and Google Home completely missed out on this feature, but now Amazon is adding it.
While the next Google Home is rumored to double as a mesh Wi-Fi router, Amazon’s upcoming Echo is reportedly adding a built-in display. In a leaked image, the new device is more monolithic, featuring a color display and possibly a camera.
Google Home is one of my favorite pieces of tech from last year, but Amazon’s Echo is right up alongside it, and for good reason. The Echo is a fantastic product that paved the way for Google Home, but in some aspects, it’s still a superior product…
One advantage that Google Home has over the Amazon Echo is its knowledge on random trivia and facts. But Google Home has also had a leg up on Alexa since launch in its ability to converse with you about those topics in a contextual manner. For example, you can ask Google Home “tell me about nearby restaurants”, followed by the query “what about coffee shops?” and Google Assistant knows that you still want to know about coffee shops near you.
Now, it appears that Alexa is picking up some of these skills thanks to a quiet update pushed out over the last couple days…
According to a report today from Bloomberg, Amazon is planning a premium “Echo-like” speaker powered by the company’s voice assistant Alexa. While the company building on its Echo success with a new speaker wouldn’t be surprising by itself, this one has a twist: it’s said to sport a large display…
Even though Google Home has been released, it hasn’t taken much attention away from Amazon’s popular Echo devices. The Amazon Echo and Echo Dot both bring a lot to the table, in many ways more so than Google Home does at this point. Many of the Echo’s popular features are enabled by “Skills,” best described as third-party plugins. Now AT&T has released its own Alexa skill, enabling customers to send texts via an Echo.
Along with the Pixel smartphones, Chromecast Ultra, Google WiFi, and more, Google also launched the Google Home, its Amazon Echo competitor. While this new product is insanely compelling, enough to where I’ve already pre-ordered despite owning an Echo, there is one giant obstacle it has to face: compatibility.
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The UE Roll is one of the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy and it’s on sale for $50 (Reg. $80+)
If you search Amazon for streaming media players, you’ll find plenty of them. The one thing you won’t find is any Chromecast devices, and company CEO Jeff Bezos told the Re/code conference why not. Chromecast doesn’t currently offer access to Amazon’s own Prime Video platform, and Bezos says that isn’t because Google refuses to include it, but because it wants too much money for doing so.
[W]hen we sell those devices, we want our player — our Prime Video player — to be on the device, and we want it to be on the device with acceptable business terms. You can always get the player on the device. The question is, can you get it on there with acceptable business terms?
While he doesn’t say so outright, the meaning of the vague phrase is pretty clear …
Google Home was announced earlier this month by Chromecast head Mario Queiroz. The team responsible for Google’s hit streaming media device headed up development of the Amazon Echo competitor because Home is essentially a “dressed-up version of Chromecast”, according to The Information.
Back in March, The Information reported that Google is working on an Amazon Echo competitor. Today, Recode has confirmed such a device and added that we might get a peak of it at Google I/O. While it won’t launch next week, the conference will reportedly have a big focus on voice search and personal assistants.
We heard a couple of months ago that Amazon was working on a smaller, more portable version of its Echo voice assistant speaker, and now it’s here. Actually, Amazon has announced today two new Alexa-enabled devices, the Echo Dot (which is the aforementioned smaller version of the larger Echo), and the Amazon Tap, which is essentially an Alexa-enabled portable speaker…
