Battle of the smart speakers: Google Home vs. Amazon Echo

[glennrocksvb]

Amazon has a headstart on this department. First they launched Amazon Echo in 2014, then Amazon Tap, now Amazon Echo Dot which is set to be released on October 20, 2016.

Here's a video on Amazon Echo Dot

Now, Google is finally about to release a similar product called Google Home. Here's a demo video of Google Home.

What do you think of these? Are you into these kinds of products? I don't have any of them (yet) but I like to use OK Google on my phone.

[William]

What do you think of these? Are you into these kinds of products? I don't have any of them (yet) but I like to use Google Now on my phone.

Um, really not my cup of tea. I really really am an audiophile junkie, and have a high end sound system in the house. My Smart TV plugs into the home system along with my computer. I can't imagine replacing my current build with those little guys - smaller is not always better. Here's a picture of my latest speaker cabinets. A before and after shot to give you a hint of my personal tastes:



You'll have to excuse my buildup that was completed in the apartment. I haven't a garage to work out of at the moment. The only way I could see purchasing those devices is for a portable solution, but I don't travel much so it's unappealing to me. I can plug a mobile device such as an Iphone into my Klipsch receiver now which puts out 250watts per channel to two cabinets. Not including the self amplified two 600 watt 12 inch sub-woofers.

Keep your articles coming, Glenn, I like your views on tech products and being informed on the latest gadgets.

Enjoy,
William

[glennrocksvb]

Those voice-powered speakers are not meant to replace your audio speaker systems. The appeal for it is you can ask them anything you want (weather, schedule, place order, call Uber, control smart home devices, etc) and not just to play music. It's more like an assistant like Siri by Apple, "OK Google" by you know who or Cortana by Windows.

[oliver]

Also read about Siri & Google Now
Siri

If you ever studied Siri, you certainly noticed that it was unavailable for most of the third-party applications. With iOS 10 release, the situation has changed a lot. At WWDC 2016, it was announced that Siri can be integrated with the apps that work in the following areas:

• Audio and video calls
• Messaging and contacts
• Payments via Siri
• Photos search
• Workout Car booking

To enable the integration, Apple's introduced a special SiriSDK that consists of two frameworks. The first one covers the range of tasks to be supported in your app, and the second one advises on a custom visual representation when one of the tasks is performed.
Each of the app types above defines a certain range of tasks which are called intents. The term refers to the users' intentions and, as a result, to the particular scenarios of their behavior.

In SiriSDK, all the intents have corresponding custom classes with defined properties. The properties accurately describe the task they belong to. For instance, if a user wants to start a workout, the properties may include the type of exercises and the time length of a session. Having received the voice request, the system completes the intent object with the defined characteristics and sends it to the app extension. The last part processes the data and show the correct result at the output.
You can find more information about how to work with intents and objects on Apple's official website. Below is a scheme on intents processing:

How Siri processes intents Google Now and voice actions


Remember the good cop, bad cop technique? Well, Google has always been the first one to show the maximum loyalty to developers. Unlike Apple, Google doesn't have strict requirements for design. The approvement period in the Play Market is much shorter and not as fastidious as in the Apple App Store too.
Nevertheless, in a question of smart assistant integration, it appears quite conservative. For now, Google assistant works with the selected apps only. The list includes such hot names as eBay, Lyft, Airbnb, and others. They are allowed to make their own Now Cards via special API.
The good news is that you still have a chance to join the ranks of the proud owners of a Now assistant in your app. For that, you need to register the application with Google.
Remember not to confuse Google Now with the voice commands. Now is not just about listening and responding. It is an intelligent creature that can learn, analyze, and conclude. Voice actions are the narrower concept. It works on the basis of speech recognition followed by information search.
Google provides the developers with a step by step guide for integrating such functionality into an app. Voice Actions API teaches how to include a voice mechanism both in mobile and wearable apps.

What is Google's intelligent mechanism

[shining]

I don´t have one and I only know one single person who has Alexa...

Despite of the possibility of Google or Amazon listening to all my conversations... I just don´t need a thing like that. I also never use Siri... I prefer typing and reading And when I am working there is no sound ... no tv ... no radio or music... no nothing ... okay except sometimes the barking of my dog (Since I switch everything off on daytime I got rid off my headaches and concentration is much better)