Ken Whittaker, Front Rush
Each week we try to teach you something new or enlighten you about the latest technology. My colleagues and I have written about smart gadgets, wearable technology, and even emojis over the past few months. With all this wearable, on-the-go technology, downloads, apps, and other virtual products taking over your time, it’s sometimes nice to hear about how technology can be used to make your life easier. As you may have seen on TV during the holiday season, Amazon Echo and Google Home are the two dominating voice controlled tech products intended to basically sit in once place and do a lot of stuff. These mini know-it-all robots (they aren’t really robots, it’s just cooler to call them that) have tons of capability, and could finally be the bridge many of us have hoped for (or feared) all our lives. How cool would it be to turn on the lights with your voice or even change the channel when you ask? To some, this might seem lazy. To others, it’s the future.
Ok, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To back up a little bit, the Amazon Echo and Google Home are two very popular standalone devices that respond to your command and give you feedback, information, and tons of other responses. I have had the ability to use both, and have found each to be quite impressive. Setup on each is relatively simple. Basically, you take the device out of the box, plug it in, download the companion app on your phone, and it’s set up in minutes. Before you know it, you’ll have a talking robot in your house, waiting for you to put it to work.
“Excuse me? There’s a mini robot listening to me in my house?” you might be thinking. Well, not exactly. Both devices are activated with a “wake word” which lets the device know you’re talking to it. Amazon has cleverly named their device “Alexa” while Google is activated by saying “Ok, Google” or “Hey, Google” before it starts to listen to you. The Echo allows for some variability in wake word, such as calling it “Amazon” or other select options. From experience, it’s pretty simple to get used to activating the device. I’m sure that some of you are still a little freaked out. Basically, once you activate either device with the wake word, it will light up and start listening to your request. These devices do not always listen to your conversations (they have better things to do) – so there aren’t really any privacy concerns. The computational power to listen and process everything you say would be cumbersome and useless, quite frankly.
Great. But what’s the point of having a mini robot with selective hearing? From streaming music, checking sports scores, new headlines, weather updates, and controlling your lighting – the possibilities are endless. Amazon was the first major player into this space, releasing the Echo device first. The Google Home was just released a few months ago – and now the race is on. As with most technology, there are things that one device can do that the other cannot. For example, the Echo allows you to purchase things from Amazon and has exclusive deals for Prime members, while Google Home has the powerful backend of the Google search engine behind it. In my experience, asking the Echo facts was hit or miss, generally. The Google Home is better with satisfying the answer to the random curious thought that may be running through your mind. On the contrary, Amazon’s established history in the space has allowed it to partner with multiple third parties already, particularly with home automation, to bring “Alexa” to many more devices, as of now. Some speculate that Google will be able to catch up soon, but all we can do is wait and see.
Competition in this area in technology is bound to be a good thing. For one, users will want each device to be capable of doing things the other is able to do – and both Amazon and Google will be motivated to provide customers with an excellent experience. If you’re curious, I suggest you look into the devices. If you tend to be in the Amazon eco-system – you might find more benefit from the Echo devices (original Amazon Echo is about $180 and the smaller version Echo Dot is about $50). If you want to see where Google takes the product and find searching to be more beneficial, you might want to check out the Google Home (priced around $130 currently). For me, both devices are great and offer a ton of functionality. As a self proclaimed geek, setting up wall outlets that respond to “turn on the light” after calling the wake word is awesome. The future possibilities are seemingly endless.