Ah, I see. Yes, that’s true. I had my friend bring me back the original Google Home in December 2016 from the US. As I recall, it didn’t come out in the UK for another 4-5 months after that.
The Home Mini launch happened around the same time though. But then the Home Max took near enough a year. I hope Google can begin to tighten up their distribution.
Looks like it’s just hit the FCC. Doesn’t really add any information though:
October 22nd release date, leaked by EE.
If you click through to the article there’s also some leaked stuff about the Pixel 3 and XL pricing.
Exciting but my special mouth just can’t get around OKAY GOOGLE. It’s seems such a mouthful and almost tongue twister like (maybe it’s my softie southern accent!). I find Siri very unpredictable so don’t really use it but Alexa I find very personable and smooth and she usually knows what I’m talking about 
OK Google is easy, I probably say it about a million times a day. I have an Echo Dot as well which I don’t use because it gets everything wrong compared to Google. And the voice/tone isn’t anywhere as nice.
How about ‘Hey Google’?
Pulling the trigger today on a Home Hub in Aqua Green color 
Now I just need to figure out what room to put it in
Continuing the discussion from the other thread… and as someone who has now ordered one - What do you think you’ll use it for?
It looks like a tablet version of Apples “Home” app - Where all smart things in the house are grouped together (although the UI looks a little nice on the Google version from what I can see).
But as I said before, my “issue”, if you can call it that, is knowing where to put it for maximum use.
The bedroom would be useful for mornings.
The kitchen for dinner time.
The lounge for “down time”.
Obviously this is all just my usage which is personal to me - But I’d really struggle with optimising the placement of it.
Then you have the dilemma (well, I do anyway), of making a “smart” appliance more hassle than the dumb appliance.
With Philips Hue for example, you need to leave the light switches on all the time - So it can often be more hassle to get your phone out (or attempt the voice activation) to turn the light off/on, than it is to just flip the switch.
That’s coming from someone whose been trying to combat this issue for years (with young kids it doesn’t help!)
I’ve been keeping an eye on them to replace the only Home I have, which is in my kitchen, and mostly used for timers and music. It’d be nice to use it for TV while cooking/baking, though I understand the Chromecast ability is still limited, so I’m holding off until that’s sorted
Well, you could buy 3 
I’ve thought about that… there are so many places it could be useful. I’m not so sure about the connected stuff as it’ll probably only work with things that connect to google, so that’s nest stuff and other things compatible. It won’t for example talk to my washing machine which requires smartthings (which is an utterly terrible app).
Imagine showing this conversation to someone from 1980 
I exclusively use voice activation for all the lights in my home. Lights going on and off isn’t the main draw - it’s changing the brightness level and colours, or leaving individual lights on and others off in a room - so for example in the living room, there’s the main bulb, there’s a standing 6 foot lamp, and there’s a portable Hue Go lamp. When we’re watching movies or TV in the evening, we’ll turn the top lamp off, turn the standing lamp down to 20% and set the Hue Go to a relaxing colour (usually purple). Similarly when we’re going to bed, we’ll tell the Google Home to turn off all the living room lamps and turn on the bedside table lamps in the bedroom. When I get a chance, I’ll be setting this as a “Routine” on Google Home which will make it even faster - so for example, the command could be “Hey Google, TV time” and it’ll do the above, plus open Netflix on the Nexus Player.
I’m not yet sure on placement but my gut reaction for the Home Hub is to put it in the kitchen. That’s usually where we set timers when cooking, for example, and so generally when we’re cooking we’ll be asking the Home every so often how long is left on the timer, and as we like to have music on whilst cooking, it’ll interrupt the flow. With the Home Hub I’m thinking the music can be playing but the timer will be visualised so I won’t keep having to ask. I also tend to use the Home in the kitchen to add things to the shopping list, and I’ll sometimes forget what’s already on there so to have a visual shopping list will be nice.
Mines going in the kitchen as a speaker, morning news TV and hopefully I’ll be able to cast things to it if I’m locked out of the living room 
I think mine will also be going in the kitchen. Really for me it makes the most sense as a kitchen assistant as you need to be able to see things at a glance rather than calling them up by voice all the time 
Everything my home controls in the other rooms e.g lights and thermostat are either visual, or something I’m happy to ask Google about only every now and then.
With my Hue I’m now using their light switches mostly, along with automation (lights on sensors, or coming on based on my location etc) as I was finding that voice wasn’t particularly accurate all the time (no Google, I didn’t ask you to turn all the lights on while my wife is trying to sleep before shift) and it isn’t super intuitive to people that don’t know it’s there and then they were flicking all the switches.
Waste of money. If you can see smoke, it’s done 
Edit : If you can’t see smoke, it’s either nearly done, or you didn’t switch it on.
Reviews are great!
5 stars from The Guardian :
So it turns out the Aqua colour won’t ship until the end of November 
So… I cancelled the order and my partner just bought us one from John Lewis in the light gray colour! Both the black and grey ones are available in stores, whereas the other colours are only from the Google Store.
Yes, I’m impatient! But waiting another month is too long.
Photos to come in an hour or so when she gets home! 
I had mine setup in my kitchen for a couple of hours before I went away for the weekend 
It’s replacing a standard home I had in their already. The speaker isn’t as good as the home so I might look at a Bluetooth speaker to supplement itv for music, I do think it’s slightly better than the the mini for sound though.
Screen is pretty good quality and seeing the news is a bonus as part of my ‘Good morning’ routine and I love that it’s cycling through pictures when not in use 
I can see a timer counting down as well when cooking so I don’t have to keep asking how long is left
That’s great to hear as mine will be replacing a Mini in my kitchen! My full-size one is in the living room (might upgrade that to a Max at some point).