Yes, that goes the saying. Whoever gives first, gives twice. Or, what is the same, that the cat usually takes to the water. And in the case of the launch of Google Home and Google Home mini, the first smart home assistant in the Spanish language to be marketed in Spain, this may be the case. On June 19, both devices were launched, to bring home all the possibilities, or rather almost all, that smartphones already have to dialogue with them, navigate, manage music, news, the agenda, … through commands. voice.
Google combines machine learning, voice recognition and integration of the personal context of each user, such as location or daily routines, whenever the user allows it. Google Home can provide the most personalized and relevant responses to the customer, and it also allows streaming video content to a TV connected to a Chromecast device.
However, Google Home, with its many advantages and features, in addition to its enormous ease of installation, has a great shortcoming: it is not possible to make calls or establish communications, even if it is associated with the mobile phone or smartphone. It seems absurd, but it is so. In the United States it does allow it, but in Spain we will have to wait for this functionality to be added to Google’s smart home assistant. Perhaps it would have been more coherent to wait for the calls to be available to market it, but the competition is tightening.
Amazon could launch its Echo or Echo Show devices in Spain around the summer, and we’ll see if they integrate communications or not. And Telefónica also seems to have prepared its Movistar Home with Aura for the last third of the year, and surely it will have among its features the option of making calls and video calls. Apple Home Pod, which has no prospect of arriving in Spain, does not have the option of making calls in the markets in which it is already present, including the United States.
Even with this disadvantage, Google Home is a smart butler that you can have in your home to do endless things just by saying “OK Google”. The user can enjoy their favorite music, radio, news or podcasts. You can even send audio from your Android or IOS device (iPhone) to Google Home over WiFi from one of the many Chromecast-enabled audio apps.
Also with Google Home you can get answers from the Google search engine, get the latest information about weather, traffic, finances, news, sports and local businesses when you need it, and search for any information, and ask it, for example, by travel itinerary, plans or traffic on the route to work. And it also collects specific daily information for each user just saying: “Ok Google, how is the day presented.” The device replies with the weather to do, the user’s route to work, their calendar, or a news summary from the source they have chosen.
If the user also has a Chromecast and other smart devices in their home such as lights, thermostats and switches with home automation systems, they can use Google Home to manage all these devices with their voice. So, for example, you can stream YouTube and Netflix content directly to your TV, and turn the lights off and on, or operate or stop a small appliance, simply by voice command to Google Home.
Experts point out that home devices such as Google Home, or Amazon’s Echos, and others that will appear on the market in the coming years, will be the ones that will cause a great growth in the use of artificial intelligence. Ovum, for example, says that in 2021 around 623 million digital assistants will be sold in the world both for the home and for other types of environments, such as vehicles, clothing or even televisions.
Google, says the consulting firm Ovum, currently stands as the main digital assistant in the world, since it has more than 1,700 million Android smartphones where they are already installed. If you can penetrate the home with Google Home with the same capacity, you will have a lot of ground gained. But it will be complicated, since Amazon is the market leader in this area, and Apple also wants its place with its Home Pod. And the bets of Facebook, Samsung to develop its assistant Bixby, and Chinese powers such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are still to come.
