If you live and/or work in the Las Vegas area you’re probably accustomed to seeing plenty of strange things. When CES rolls around, that means a city packed with tech nerds and executives set against a backdrop of over-the-top branding.
If you live and/or work in the Las Vegas area you’re probably accustomed to seeing plenty of strange things. When CES rolls around, that means a city packed with tech nerds and executives set against a backdrop of over-the-top branding. Google hasn’t had a massive presence at CES, historically speaking, but this year appears to be a whole lot different, and the company is painting Vegas white.
As various tech companies begin setting up for a big week of product reveals and awkward keynotes, Google is very clearly going all-in. As TechCrunch notes, Google is unpacking and setting up a massive monument to grab the attention of anyone within a few blocks of the Las Vegas Convention Center. “Hey Google,” a nod to its increasingly popular Assistant, is plastered everywhere, including the city’s public transit systems. This is going to be a crazy week.
The CES invites that Google sent out a few weeks ago were quirky and playful, but little did anyone know that the odd, toy-like model depicted in the PR rollout was actually going to make a life-sized appearance at the show itself. Now that Google has begun setting everything up it’s clear that the company is investing a lot more into this year’s CES than it regularly does.
I mean, just look at this insanity:
There’s even a giant Google gumball machine!
Google hasn’t talked a lot about what it’s planning to showcase at the event, but given the heavy Assistant branding it’s a safe bet that the company’s services will play a big part. With the fight between Assistant, Alexa, and Siri intensifying over the past year — and with Amazon’s Echo devices gaining lots of users over the holidays — it looks like Google is done playing around.
