New York Times dropped the most accurate hint for the name of Google’s Amazon smart speaker competitor yesterday. Google officially announced Home at their Google I/O event today. To be able to compete with the online retailer’s Alexa powered devices, Google had to add a virtual assistant to their device too.
Google Home comes in a speaker form that always has tp be plug into the wall, the device come with always-listening, far-field microphones that can hear you from across the room. The Home device will be able to answer your questions play your music, cast videos to your TV, and control some of your home automation gadgets with voice-controlled tasks. The Google Home assistant also comes with Cast support, this feature lets you Cast your video to your Televison or just group it with other speakers in the house for multi-room audio. Google Home will be available later this year for an unspecified price. You can sign up to be notified for updates at the Home website. I personally missed the opportunity to be an early user of Amazon’s Echo speaker when it launched and I’m not planning to miss out on this.
