Google stakes its AI claim
Stakes have been raised for maker of iPhone, iPad
New products help world’s most valuable company maintain pole position,
If the brand-new, voice-activated Google Assistant inhabiting Google Home could somehow have a private conversation with Alexa, its counterpart and soon-to-be rival inside Amazon Echo, the conversation would ask: “What the heck is Siri up to?”
The question takes on added relevance now that Google has unveiled Google Home, its promising, oft-rumored answer to Amazon’s increasingly popular — and increasingly versatile — Echo speaker.
If Google Home lives up to its promise, and we won’t know for sure until this small, yet-to-be-priced, always-listening appliance shows up later in the year, then we’ll have another relevant voice-driven device inside the house to play music, control the appliances (Nest anyone?), and, yes, leverage Google’s expertise in search.
Moreover, Google Home, which brings to mind Google’s OnHub routers, also communicates with the Chromecast device you might have plugged into your TV, leading to all sorts of intriguing possibilities with YouTube and other Google properties.
So yes, we have Google Home vs. Amazon Echo, and it’s worth noting that Google CEO Sundar Pichai credited Amazon during his I/O remarks for “creating a lot of excitement in this space.”
But it also adds pressure to Apple to respond in kind when it hosts its own Worldwide Developers Conference in a few weeks. Siri, of course, remains the dominant voice inside your iPhone and iPad, and the voice-activated assistant is now also in the vehicle you may drive via CarPlay.
Siri doesn’t yet have a presence on the Mac, however (though that could change at WWDC), much less an Echo or Google Home-like appliance. Echo is a great product for the kitchen or bedroom, where I would expect Home to also live.
What does Apple have in mind for those rooms?
This shouldn’t just be a matter of new hardware or gadgets either, so much as where Apple goes with artificial intelligence and Web services, where much of the battle among tech’s titans will take place. We should start to get answers at WWDC.
After all, Alexa and the Google Assistant are wondering.