GIANT GRASP
Google gadgets targeting four tech rivals
Google unveiled its next wave of products Wednesday afternoon, and one thing is clear: No rival is safe.
In addition to revealing the Pixel 2 smartphone — the successor to what is widely considered to be one of the top iPhone rivals — the Made By Google event saw the search giant announce products that amped up competition with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and even GoPro.
“I think Google is testing the waters here,” CFRA Research’s Angelo Zino told The Post.
“They’re going out there and trying to make their mark on the hardware side of things.”
The Mountain View, Calif., company has been steadily exiting its software and search comfort zone over the past few years, but this latest gadget introduction is its biggest hardware move.
One week after Amazon’s jam-packed Echo home assistant event, Google revealed a new version of its Home smart speaker to take on one of the e-commerce giant’s most popular products: the Echo Dot.
At $49, the Google Home Mini is priced to steal some of the Dot’s thunder. The pint-size smart speaker comes in three colors, and has access to the full gamut of the Google Assistant abilities.
The tech juggernaut also has set Apple’s forthcoming HomePod speaker in its crosshairs by announcing the Google Home Max, a $399 speaker with 4.5-inch sub-woofers and tweeters that boast of being 20 time more powerful than the regular Home.
What’s more, Google plans to ship the speaker in December — in time for the holidays.
A survey published in Quartz, the tech business news site, shows that as of August, 13.5 percent of consumers had an Amazon Echo device in their homes, compared with 5.9 percent who owned a Google smart speaker.
When it comes to laptops, Google has its eye on Microsoft’s 2-in-1 Surface Book, which can be folded into a tablet. Its new highend Chromebook, dubbed Pixelbook, is listed at $999 and functions similarly.
The gadget extravaganza also included Pixel Buds, the company’s answer to Apple’s wireless AirPods earbuds, which can translate 40 different foreign languages in real time.
Like the AirPods, the Pixel Buds are Bluetooth headphones that have a charging case. They retail for $160.
But it was GoPro, the struggling digital camera maker, that took the biggest hit from the Google gear onslaught. Shares fell 6.3 percent, to $10.39, in the wake of the unveiling of Google Clips, a $249 miniature camera.
Shares of Google parent Alphabet were off $6.11, to $966.78, while Apple slipped $1, to $153.48, Amazon gained $8.35, to $965.45, and Microsoft edged up 43 cents, to $74.69.