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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Google Home is pretty good at hearing what you say, but sometimes, especially when using “Hey Google,” it doesn’t hear you. If your Home isn’t in a place where you can see the LEDs, you won’t have any clue that the device didn’t hear you. Thankfully, there’s a way to fix that.
Google Assistant’s various commands can really come in handy, especially when it comes to casting content to the TV or controlling smart home products. However, some of those commands can become pretty long and tedious, especially if you say them a lot. Now, Google is making it easier to perform commands with shortcuts.
Following an announcement from GE earlier today, LG is the latest appliance manufacturer to announce integration with Google Home and Assistant for a new lineup of connected appliances. The company made the announcement during the opening day of the Google I/O 2017 developer conference.
At I/O 2017, Google has announced a slew of new features for their Home connected speaker. Major new features include hands-free calling, Bluetooth support, and visual responses.
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Google Assistant was slow to kick off in terms of availability, with only Pixel users in the US officially supported. Over time, that’s changed with Assistant now available on just about every Android phone, an official SDK out, and more on the way.
Today at I/O 2017, Google has announced that the Assistant is expanding even further, with support for more new languages…
Google Assistant is a big deal for Google this year, and we’re expecting the company to announce quite a bit regarding its AI at I/O 2017, starting tomorrow. Personally, there are a few things I’m hoping to see, let me explain…
Since its launch last year, Google Home has received a steady stream of third-party smart home integrations and other new features. The latest is the ability to play ambient sounds that can help users relax.
Accessory maker iDevices is the latest to announce integration of Google Assistant with its lineup of connected home products, which were previously compatible with competing platforms, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s HomeKit.
After being reported on earlier this year, a new set of leaked images has revealed Amazon’s new Echo with a built-in display. With it being rumored that the next Home will also act as a mesh router, do you think it should also have a touchscreen?
Google has quietly added a number of new smart home integrations to Home and Assistant today. Meanwhile, one developer has already found a way to add Assistant to desktops using the recently announced SDK.
Google I/O is just around the corner and for those who aren’t lucky enough to be going, Google has plenty of options to tune in. It will offer up live streams for major events, and of course, 9to5Google will be there to bring you all the latest news and more from the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Along with those, though, Google also seems to have plans for a Google Home app for I/O 17, and it briefly went live early…
Back at launch, Google Home wasn’t very friendly with smart home products, but over the past few months, Google has worked with more new companies to expand what Home is capable of. Personally, I love using smart home products, and I do so quite often in my home office. Here’s what I’ve been using.
The Google Home is meant to be the center of your house. By simply saying the “Ok, Google” command, you’re supposed to be able to ask your Home almost any question and/or request that it do something for you. So, assuming that a large number of our readers own a Google Home, what do you use your Home for?
As hinted at earlier this month, Google Home can now recognize multiple users and deliver personalized Assistant results. Neural networks are used to recognize different voices, with the feature rolling out starting today to Google Home users in the U.S.
Following its announcement earlier this year, Hyundai has today announced that its integration with Google Assistant is available for BlueLink users on recent Hyundai vehicles.
Update: Google has seemingly blacklisted the exact sound bite from the ad. Home no longer responds to the question, unless you ask it yourself using your own voice.
Most of us are already annoyed enough with this one aspect of Google Home: It’s not smart enough to know that you’re — or at least someone authorized — the one trying to talk to it. That means it sometimes wakes you up demon-possessed in the middle of the night, and it means it sometimes mistakingly hears other background noise — like your TV, for instance — as trying to wake it up with the “OK Google” command. Starting today, this annoyance is going to get a lot worse.
Burger King will begin airing an annoying new ad during primetime television later today that is made to intentionally — yes, I said intentionally — trigger your Google Home or other Assistant-powered device into telling you about a burger…
Google Home and Google Assistant do a lot of things, but they don’t integrate as well as they should with Google’s dozens of other services. Slowly but surely, though, Google is changing that. Today, the company has announced another new feature for Google Assistant and thus, Google Home — flight price tracking.
When Google Home launched, it — through Google Assistant — had the ability to take note of your shopping list and drop the information into Google Keep. Yesterday, Google dropped that system in exchange for a new one where and starting today, it’s live for most people…
A card spotted in Google’s Home app by tech writer Owen Williams suggests that the connected speaker will soon support multiple users. We’ve since seen the same card ourselves.
It appears that the update was accidentally released early, as there is no other sign of multi-user support beyond a non-functional ‘linked account(s)’ setting, but there is evidence that Google planned this from the start …
