Newly Unveiled Google Home Aims To Be The Amazon Echo Killer

The Amazon Echo has mainly been standing alone in a market it pioneered, but Thursday’s official unveiling of the Google Home has put the older device on notice. In some regards, the Amazon Echo is quite a bit like the Apple iPad in that it beat all comers to the market. It would have been foolish for Amazon to think the Echo (otherwise known as Alexa) would stand all by itself for very long, and in some regards it’s interesting the device was out there for as long as it was.

Part of the reason Google Home took so long to get to market is that its parent company and others like it weren’t sure whether or not Amazon had a winner on its hands. It took a little while for the cylindrical device to take on in popularity, but once it did, it took off fast. Once Google saw there was an actual market to tap, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it made the Home to try and take the top spot.

As the Wall Street Journalpoints out, Alexa’s voice recognition softwareis along the same lines of Apple’s Siri but also goes well beyond that mark. Despite that, Amazon Echo is still largely a niche market product, but it’s getting more popular all the time. It seems like it was years ago we first saw advertisements for the Amazon Echo as people talked to Alexa as though it was a real person. While Apple ads did the same with Siri when it was first brought to market, it’s clear in a short period of time where Siri falls short. Amazon Echo, on the other hand, has been billed as something people can have a conversation with if they feel the need. Instead of barking orders to Amazon Echo, people can ask things like they would if they had a butler or secretary and get the right response.

Now the Google Home is officially looking to grab what consumer dollars are out there for a personal digital assistant you’re supposed to be able to put in the middle of your home and call out to when you need information. The Verge reports Google has put Mario Queiroz in charge of the Home project. For those who don’t know, Queiroz is the man who is behind the success of his company’s Chromecast.

Google claims Home will be better at almost all things than the Amazon Echo, despite the Amazon Echo being on the market longer and having a head start when it comes to this kind of device. The first improvement the Google Home has made over the Amazon Echo is it’s smaller and fits into the background just a bit better. The small cylindrical shape of the Google Home will also be able to be changed to some degree, in order to fit your home decor better. This is a feature the Amazon Echo has never attempted, instead going with a solid black color in hopes of fitting into whatever decor it’s made a part of.

The Google Home isn’t portable, and it has to be plugged in, but even that is being billed as a positive. The Google Home has one significant feature that its parent company is trumpeting it thinks can beat out the Amazon Echo, and that’s as a speaker. That means the Google Home will be able to handle playing songs through the company’s Cast service, but it will also be able to talk to Chromecast and YouTube in order to help users find a song or show they want to watch or listen to. Whether or not these features help Google Home overtake Amazon Echo is yet to be seen, but healthy competition is likely good for the market as a whole.