Google Home

AI-powered speakers like the Google Home and Amazon Echo have become some of the most popular smarthome products, offering the ability to play music, control other devices, handle search queries, and more. In China, however, these devices and their corresponding services aren’t widely available.

Xiaomi may have the perfect solution with its newly announced Mi AI speaker.

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Google Assistant debuted last year in an ever-competitive market. With Amazon’s Alexa dominating the game, it had a ton of ground to make up for. In yesterday’s Alphabet earnings call, Google CEO (and recently appointed Alphabet board member) Sundar Pichai made mention of how many Assistant devices are now available, and it’s a pretty incredible statistic.

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For its first move into the world of AI smart speakers, Google did a commendable job with Google Home. The feature-set for Home was fairly packed at launch, and since then, helpful new features have either been added or been promised to debut at some point in the future. Google Home also looks rather sleek and modern from a hardware point of view, but if you’re someone who’s a fan of retro designs, there wasn’t a lot to like there.

Thankfully, with a bit of technical know-how and patience, it’s possible to get a Google Home-like product in as retro of a getup as they come — a 1986 Radio Shack intercom.

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Following a Canadian release last month, Google Home is continuing its international expansion with upcoming launches in Germany and Australia. Availability in the latter country is being coupled with Google Wifi and taking place this week, while Germany will have to wait until early August.

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At I/O 2017, a spate of new features and media integrations were announced for Google Home. The latest allows the smart Google Assistant speaker to stream uploaded and purchased songs from Play Music.

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Since launching late last year on the Google Home and Pixel handsets, the Google Assistant has gotten smarter and has gained more functionality. Unfortunately, there have been some bugs along the way. The latest issue that is currently plaguing the virtual assistant is the ability to accurately tell the time in Arizona, in which Assistant believes the state to be on the East Coast…

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Announced at I/O 2017, Google Home is beginning to rollout support for Bluetooth streaming. This allows the Home to act as another Bluetooth device that can stream music from an Android or iOS device.

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Amazon’s Echo is a powerful home assistant, especially thanks to its integration of hundreds of different skills. However, many were patiently waiting for Google to enter that field solely for the power that the company wields in search. Google Home has been available now for a while, but in general use, it can seem about the same as the Echo. Now, the two have been put to the test, and things went pretty much how you would have expected them to.

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While Cannes is more well-known for its film festival, there is also a subsequent event focused on advertising and communications. At the 2017 Cannes Lions, the invasive and quickly shut down Burger King clip that hijacked “Ok, Google” won a top ad award, while Tilt Brush and Google Earth VR also grabbed honors.

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Home automation is an idea straight out of an 80’s sci-fi TV show. Now, with Google Assistant, we can simply ask our phones or Google Home to turn on the lights or turn off a fan. The biggest issue with smarthome products, though, has long been their upfront cost. Thanks to the intelliPlug, a product currently being funded on Indiegogo, this might not be as much of a problem going forward…

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Two of the most popular trends in the technology industry today are AI and machine learning. With that, some of the larger tech companies have created voice assistants such as Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, and now Bixby. So that they can actually be useful, companies are attempting to add the assistants to everything, including speakers.

If Samsung were to one day create a smart speaker powered by Bixby, would you buy it over one from the company’s competitors?

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The Google Home, if used and paired with other items correctly, can turn your ordinary home into a smart house. While many with a Home already know that, Google wants to make sure everyone knows just how useful and powerful it can be with a pair of new ads…

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Today, at WWDC, Apple unveiled its long-awaited “Siri speaker” which it named the HomePod. Its strange name aside, the HomePod does offer much better sound performance when compared to the Google Home and the Amazon Echo thanks to its seven built-in speakers. Would you buy a Google Home that provided a more premium speaker setup?

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I’ve been noticing a weird issue with Google Home off and on for the last couple weeks, but it has become particularly annoying this weekend. Basically, the device has been interrupting many of my queries with “Sorry, something went wrong,” and then asks me to try again in a few seconds. At first I chalked it up to a random glitch on my end, but it seems it’s a bit more than that.

If you’re experiencing this problem as well, just know that you’re not alone.

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At I/O 2017 last month, Google announced that Home would launch in six more countries over the course of the summer. The first of those will be Canada on June 26th, with Google Assistant seeing a similar launch in both English and French for the device.

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At I/O 2017, Sundar Pichai noted that computers are getting better at understanding voice input, with Google having achieved “significant breakthroughs” in speech recognition. In fact, Google’s machine learning systems are now nearly on par with humans.

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I love using my Google Home to control smart devices in my home office, but I’ve yet to expand that to the rest of the home due to the cost. Options like LIFX and Philips Hue are undeniably fantastic, but nowhere near affordable. IKEA, maker of the best cheap furniture, is preparing to step into the smart home arena with extremely affordable new bulbs and more, and now, we’re finding out that the products will have Assistant compatibility.

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