This is super interesting. Google and their partners are getting super aggressive with Assistant, and it’s about time.
It’s been obvious to me for at least 2 or 3 years now that Google’s lead in the Digital Assistant space is only growing larger and larger. I own devices that have Alexa, Siri and Cortana, and none of them come remotely close to being as good as Google Assistant. I’m admittedly a Google fanboy, but all objective comparisons go the same way, and even the most diehard Apple fans I know will concede that Siri is pretty terrible in comparison.
Amazon got a bit of a head-start by being first to market, but they’ve squandered that lead - stats have shown that the majority of smart assistants sold in the last quarter are Google devices. In fact, there were 1,500 unique devices with Google Assistant support in January - by May that rose to 5000.
I personally have : Pixel 2 XL, Pixel Buds, Google Home, LG Watch Style and 2 x Google Home Mini, and I’m completely in the habit of just asking Google to do various things no matter where I am.
I’d like to be able to re-map something on the iPhone to trigger Assistant, but if that’s not possible I’ll likely just put it on my homescreen… Likewise I’d like to try and find a way to run it on the Macbook.
This definitely seems to the future paradigm of computing, and it looks like Google is going to win the war here.
It’ll be very interesting to see what Google IO next year brings to the table. Assistant really is getting smarter and smarter every day.
I got an echo dot recently in the prime sales thing and it’s pretty bad in terms of accuracy and flexibility in what it can do. Kind of feels much more like everything is hard coded than Google. Funny thing is I remember a time when it seemed like the opposite was true
I have to agree GA is now sailing past both Siri and Alexa and I think it’s going to be hard for either of them to ever catch up. Google has such a mass of accurate data behind it when the others rely on third parties to provide information that doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as accurate.
For everyday stuff e.g. automation around the house Alexa is great if not better than GA when you take into account the integration with Fire TV. If I need to ask a question that relies on Google’s knowledge such as the opening time for a shop on a bank holiday then I get Alexa to ask Google.
Not sure I’d switch to Google Home though - I can get all the benefits of both with Alexa without having to say the impersonal “OK Google” wake word. Nevermind with 6 Alexa’s it’s not a cheap switch.
I use GA loads. Siri is pretty awful in comparison. GA seems to link into loads of things I use and actually does stuff with that information. It’s ability to understand natural speech is pretty amazing and makes it less of a chore than having to remember specific commands.
Yesterday I found my 2 and half years old daughter talking to Google Home mini which we use to play here kids music… Google home actually responded to her voice She said “Hey Guloogle pay Muzic” and it started paying music.
