Google Home has a long way to go until it catches up with the Amazon Echo, but Google is slowly making progress. Late last year the company added support for 30 new services and games, and recently, that list has quietly expanded.
Entertainment plays a big role in what sets Google Home apart from its archenemy, the Amazon Echo. Where the Echo features stronger ties to the smart home, Google Home features the ability to connect with various streaming services, and even Google’s Chromecast ecosystem. However, you’ll need to set that up before using it. So here’s how to link your Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix accounts with Google Home.
There are a lot of fantastic aspects of Google Home, but one that commonly taken for granted is its built-in speaker. Not only is it loud and 360-degree, but it’s also a fairly high-quality speaker. Of course, this was by design as Google Home can be used with some streaming services such as Spotify, Google Play Music, Pandora, and YouTube Music. However, there are many apps that Google Home doesn’t natively support. Luckily, there’s a way around that if you have an Android phone.
Google makes it easy to customize Google Home with a handful of different designs for the bottom half, but skin makers have been working since day one to customize that top half. Vinyl skins are an excellent way to customize the look of your device, but now SlickWraps is taking that up a notch with new ‘Natural Series’ covers for Google Home.
Few and far between, Google does not usually air commercials during the Super Bowl. However, this year, Google Home will get top billing as the company continues to ramp up advertising for its Assistant and latest line of consumer products.
Google Home is an excellent device, but it’s obvious that Google could be doing a lot more with it. Tying Google Home with Google’s mobile apps and just Android in general could prove ridiculously powerful, but we’ve only seen that on a minor scale so far. With AutoVoice, though, you can unlock what Google Home is really capable of, and it’s pretty awesome.
Google Home is gaining two major smart home integrations today in the form of Belkin Wemo and Honeywell products. Finally addressing a major feature difference, Google Assistant on the Pixel is also soon adding the ability to control smart appliances…
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…
According to a post made buy an LG staff member on the LG Music Flow support community (via AP), LG’s line of Music Flow speakers will soon be updated with support for both Chromecast multi-room functionality and the Google Home voice-activated speaker. This comes almost two years since the speakers first became available, and after lots of feedback was provided by various users of said forum (and more people on the Google Product Forum, too)…
One of Google Home’s greatest strengths is its ability to cast content from YouTube, Spotify, Google Play Music, Netflix, and more to a TV or set of speakers just using your voice. However, that functionality can be just a little bit touchy at times, not always working on every device. Now, Vizio has announced that its collection of SmartCast products are all now compatible with Google Home.
Google has promised a lot for the future of Google Assistant, but there’s still a lot of work to do until we get all the features seen in the original demonstrations. One thing we saw on stage back in October was Assistant interacting with various paid services, and in the latest update to the Google app, the company is taking the first step towards making those integrations official.
Update 1/9: TP-Link has reached out to clarify that Google Home integration is expected in Q2 of 2017, not February.
Google Home’s portfolio of supported products has slowly been growing since its release, but several major players still aren’t supported. That’s soon to change, though, with the addition of Actions on Google. Today at CES 2017, we were able to confirm that TP-Link products will be supported by Google Home in the coming weeks, and got a chance to see them in action…
The internet is a crazy place — we all know it. But at least it’s safe to say that, no matter how weird, whatever’s being put on it is made by someone. Well, it has been so far; but what if it wasn’t?
For the past twelve hours or so, in fact, Twitch channel seebotschat has been streaming an ominously curious pair of Google Home devices talking to each other in an endless, calm conversation about everything and anything — and it’s still live right now…
Google Home is one of our favorite products of 2016, and as we go into 2017, we’re only expecting it to get better. That includes integrations with more new services, such as popular radio streaming service iHeartRadio, which has announced that it will be coming to Google Home.
We’ve given a lot of praise to Google’s first home assistant, Google Home. It’s undoubtedly going to be a popular gift this holiday season, so if you just got your own Google Home, there are the five things you should do right off the bat.
Google released a lot of hardware products this year, and personally, the Google Pixel is my favorite. But that’s not all Google introduced. There was also the Chromecast Ultra, the Daydream View VR headset, Google Wifi, and Google Home. It’s safe to say that if there’s a Google fan in your life, you’ve had plenty of options to pick from this holiday season.
And while it may just be a couple days until Christmas, a few of these options might still be up for grabs if you’re looking to run out to a brick-and-mortar store at the last second…
Sony has announced that it is rolling out a firmware update to its line of 4K HDR Android TVs and Chromecast built-in speakers, allowing them to be controlled by Google Home. Up to this point, you had to use a phone or tablet to individually cast content to your Sony devices but now you can simply talk to your Home and say, “Ok Google, play some Christmas music on my Sony speaker.”
One of my biggest complaints about Google Home is the lack of services that tie into it. Since launch, only a small handful of products and services have integrated into Home. However, today Google has released 34 new apps and games for Google Home.
Google Home is an absolutely fantastic product, but like its competition, the Amazon Echo, I’ve always felt that it is most useful as a hub for home automation. Unfortunately, unlike its competitor, Google Home is not compatible with most smart home products. However, today the list expands with official support from Wemo.
For some reason, until now, asking to change your house’s temperature with a Nest thermostat worked just fine with Google Assistant on a Home device, but not from a Pixel. However, as Android Police reports, this should not be the case anymore…
Update: Google has made these updates official on its blog.
Google is currently trying to sell people on the idea of a world in which everything can be controlled by their voice. To do this, though, they have to convince customers to purchase their $130 Google Home with built-in Assistant. Just three days ago, Google launched Actions which will allow third-party developers to start integrating their services into Google Assistant.
Based on what we’re seeing now, it would appear that Netflix and Google Photos are the first to take full advantage of this opportunity…
At the moment, Google Assistant on Pixel and Home is still very much limited in what it can do. With the launch of Actions on Google, the company is finally opening up its Assistant to third-party developers and services. Google Home will be the first device to benefit, with Google taking a noticeably more curated approach.
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…
As we mentioned in our full review of the Google Home, the Mountain View company’s voice activated speaker is lagging a bit behind its Amazon Echo competitor in terms of third-party tie-ins. It’s just the beginning, yes, but it’s still a bummer that Home is launching without some functionality that Amazon has been spending the last couple years building into Alexa. And that’s not going to be fixed over night.
But a lot of people seem to have somehow missed that Google Assistant works with IFTTT, a service that indirectly ties your Google Home — or your Pixel, for that matter — up to a plethora of services that Google doesn’t support directly. Follow along as we walk through some easy steps that can add a lot of Assistant functionality you might not have considered possible yet…
