Google launches direct competitor to Amazon Echo

Google has finally announced an Amazon Echo competitor called Google Home. News had leaked that Google was working on a product like this and it seems like a natural fit for the company. After all, Google Now as it exists on Android is already a very capable personal assistant. Having an always-on device at home that can quickly respond to voice commands is likely to be pretty enticing for anyone who already relies on Google's myriad services.

The Google versus Amazon narrative has played well in the press, but Home and Echo seem to each offer their own advantages. The big thing for third-party manufacturers is that Amazon's Alexa AI has an API open to other developers. Google does not yet offer this kind of third-party integration for its own AI.

In many ways, though, Google's AI is more intuitive and user-friendly. It ties into Google search, allowing it to pull up the answer for all kinds of questions that Alexa might struggle to answer. Google has also been hard at work at conversational voice commands. So if you ask who Harrison Ford is, for example, you can follow up with, "How old is he?" and Google will automatically know who you're talking about.

Amazon's other big plus is its first-mover advantage. There was nothing like the Echo when it was launched and Amazon has been able to improve the product since it launched in 2014. It now works on many different kinds of smart home devices. Google no doubt has the same aspirations for Home, hoping it will become the central hub to any user's smart home. Google's parent Alphabet also owns Nest, which sells some of the most popular smart home products in the market. That should help, but Amazon isn't yet competing in smart home appliances, which is probably advantageous for the company.

Right now, third-party Alexa support is fairly limited. Amazon's terms of use won't let others make an always-listening smart home hub. Still, it's good that Amazon offers other developers a means of tapping into the company's AI platform. Most China companies making smart home hubs aren't yet utilizing others' AI, though.