Will Google Dominate the Smart Home Product Wars?
When it comes to smart home technology Amazon's Echo has already taken the lead in regard to the skills and software support needed to control the rest of your smart home gadgets.
However, it's too early to call this race as Google’s voice-controlled speaker is in direct competition and there are good odds it will be able to catch up and even possibly surpass the overall value that Amazon's Echo brings to the table.
A recent update to the Google Home support site (spotted by Android Police) reveals how the gadget is set to make it even easier to control your other connected devices and appliances around the house.
If you are unfamiliar with Google Home, here are a few things it can do:
1.) Google Home can connect some devices—like smart lights, switches, thermostats—and security cameras and all these devices can be controlled through easy voice commands.
2.) It can adapt to your voice as well as other members of your household using Google’s language recognition skills, which means no more memorizing names and specific phrases.
Before you had to say a specific phrase like, “Ok Google, Speak to LG Smart to turn on robot cleaner,” in the near future you’ll just say, “Ok Google, start the robot vacuum,” and it will know what to do.
This is an amazing upgrade coming to Google Home which makes the smart home even more likely to be arriving in your neighborhood soon!
Google already released the update, and it looks like Samsung is the first company to embrace it with new voice commands like “Pause the dishwasher” and “How much time is left on my dryer?” It’s unclear when other LG, GE and other will catch up, but hopefully it won’t be too long now that Google has added the option.
The battle of the smart home is heating up. Who do you guys think will win it? Will Amazon or Google reign supreme in this new luxurious industry to laziness?
Would you ever consider intalling a smart home system in your own house?
This is an interesting topic! Lets get a discussion going around this...
Thanks for dropping by @techblogger !
Source:
Controlling Your Smart Home With Google Home Is About to Get Easier - Lifehacker
Image Source:
Lifehacker
I wrote a post a little while back on my early experience with Alexa and Amazon's smart home solution. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a hotbed for many of these major tech companies, including but on a lesser scale, Microsoft, but if I had to pick a winner I would lean towards Google.
While they are newer into the physical device space, the software / voice recognition solution is what will make the champion. Google has a huge leg up here as they've been developing the voice rec tech for quite some time with use on phones. In the long run, I think they take it, but Amazon definitely has some loyalty to help them keep a good stake for a quite a while.
As for me, I am looking to expand my smart home gadgets heading into 2018 with some smart lightbulbs / switches to start. Would love to see where some more of the non-security smart home ideas go as IoT builds.
Great topic!
Check out my alexa discussion here if you have any interest as I broke down my experience in a bit more detail:
https://steemit.com/technology/@jcpadams/my-alexa-experience
Great contribution to this discussion! I'll certainly be stopping by to read about your alexa-experience as this is a pretty new topic of research for me and I could use some pointers... IOT is going to expand exponentially, perhaps that has something to do with the parabolic rise in price of a crypto called IOTA (it operates on the tangle and was specifically designed to facilitate transfers between IOT devices)
I've been doing some reading it IOTA and see can see why Microsoft likes the tech as it takes a spin on blockchain. Not sure how viable it is a true currency but will be interesting to follow for sure.
One key aspect to the winner of this "war" is the developer ecosystem. Both Google Home and Amazon Alexa are actively developing many voice apps (Alexa calls them "skills") that you can download to your device. For instance, Alexa has a Jeopardy skill.
The winner of this developer ecosystem battle can substantially shift the tide for market adoption.
It was just announced not to long ago that Nest will be merging with Google. I think this is a key indicator that Alphabet plans to make make google even more competitive in the smart home technology sector. Apple is way behind on this, and most likely will be missing out on this market for a long time, especially with a delayed release of its HomePod. Something that these companies will have to consider moving forward is the ease of access for developers. If one product is easier to develop software for than the other it is likely that the product will have more features and functionality. An example being other companies like the few you mentioned above being able to integrate their IoT devices using googles smart home API. I think as this tech becomes more convenient and affordable for users, we will begin to see mass adoption.
Sounds really iteresting. But I probably will not use it yet.
Seems Google will overplay every home.Google is still the leader.
I think it will depend on the developer community a lot. Google has been laying ground and developing a rich ecosystem of developer platforms for mobile devices and apps that are now converging into #Firebase as the one stop shop for apps development.
But the auto and wearable hasn't taken off as much as it was expected. Perhaps they're getting it right with the speaker tech and voice interface. If that's the case, then I think there'll be a landslide size of new apps and integrations coming out. They've already got the Android developer community momentum that is ready to take a leap if there is a platform that actually adds value (which the watch arguably didn't).
life is going to be pretty much easier in near future
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I think it's great!