Find out all you need to know about Google’s smart home assistant
Google Home is the tech giant’s answer to the question of how to bring you the smart home of tomorrow today – or, at least, later this year.
The device, which was revealed at Google’s I/O conference in May 2016 , leverages Google’s latest virtual assistant to provide you with a real-world search tool, media centre, and IoT controller all in one.
The device competes directly with Amazon Echo – as well as Apple HomeKit .
Google Home is due later in 2016. Here you will find all the latest information about the device, including its features, colour variants and the latest news.
At-a-glance
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01/03/2017: Google Home will debut by June 2017
The AI-powered Google Home personal assistant will go on sale in the UK in June, making it one of the first markets to snap up the speaker system.
Google Home competes directly with Amazon Echo, powered by Alexa AI technology, although Google Home uses Google Assistant, which can also ping back answers to questions using contextually-aware insights. For example, it can apply information you have offered it via Google’s other suite of apps to make the suggestions more relevant to you.
“The trick… in these products is trying to really understand what people are asking for,” Google hardware boss Rick Osterloh told the BBC at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
“We’ve got so much history with people using our search products and people using voice queries through Android phones… that we’re able to much better answer these types of questions. All this data really helps in us making sure we understand what the user is looking for. ”
Although Google Home was announced in the US back in 2015, it’s laid pretty dormant on this side of the pond until the announcement this week, leading many to believe it wouldn’t be coming out in the UK at all.
Google explained Home will launch in other markets too, but has not detailed which territories it will be available in, or when.
18/05/2016: Google Home smart IoT device announced
Google has unveiled Google Home, a competitor to Amazon’s Echo IoT device and personal assistant.
