Smart Speaker

Google Home, a smart speaker, is to be launched in the United Kingdom.

18:34 29 March 2017

Google is launching its Google Home, a smart speaker and home assistant designed to play music, answer questions, and control Internet of Things devices. It costs £129, £20 cheaper than its rival Amazon’s Echo.

 

The Home has been launched in the US in November alongside the introduction of two new products – Google Assistant AI and Pixel phone. Google Assistant is integrated into Google Allo and is one of the features of the Google Home device.

 

Edison Investment Research’s Richard Windsor said that the introduction of the devices paves the way for a long battle between Google and Amazon in a quest to dominate the field.

 

“The Google Home experience is so superior to Alexa that we still see a risk of Amazon losing this race.”

 

“The result is that very few of the smart home device developers are making sure that their devices work with Google Home, giving many users more reason go with Amazon’s Echo devices rather than Google.

 

“Amazon is also very fortunate that the market’s view of Alexa is so positive, as a side by side test of the Amazon Echo against Google Home shows how inferior Amazon is compared to Google,”

 

“This is why it is still Google’s battle to lose, but Amazon is clearly doing everything that it can to ensure that it is Alexa rather than Google that dominates the potentially extremely lucrative market for intelligent home automation.”