When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! A Star Trek computer that I can interact with conversationally! I just say what I want and it happens!<p>Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box which I can only interpret as a giant frickin' security liability. I <i>want</i> this, but unless it's open source top-to-bottom, I won't ever actually put one in my home. We know too much about how these things can be abused for me to ever seriously consider it without being able to verify for myself what it's doing and why.
Please, please, please be a completely open, extensible platform...<p>I want to be able to control my Apple TV with my Google Home device.<p>I want to be able to control my Phillips Hue and LiFX bulbs.<p>I want to be able to build my own custom home automation server endpoints and point my Google Home commands at them.<p>I want to be able to remote start my car with a voice command.<p>I want to be able to control my Harmony remote, and all of the devices connected to my Harmony hub.<p>I want to be able to access my Google calendar.<p>I want to be able to make hands-free phone calls to anyone on my Google contacts.<p>If my grandmother falls, I want her to be able to call 911 by talking to the Google Home device.<p>I want to be able to ask wolfram alpha questions by voice.<p>I want to be able to have a back-and-forth conversation to arrive at a conclusion. I don't want to have to say a perfectly formulated command like, "Add an event to my calendar on Jan 1, 2016 at 2:00 pm titled go to the pool party". I want to be able to say, "Can you add an event to my calendar?", and then answer a series of questions. I hate having to formulate complex commands as a single sentence.<p>I want to be able to have a Google Home device in each room, without having to give each one its own wake-up word. Just have the closest one to me respond to my voice (based on how well it can hear me).<p>I want to be able to play music on all of my Google Home devices at the same time, and have the music perfectly synchronized.<p>This is my wish list. I am currently able to do more than half of these items with Amazon Echo, but I had to do a bunch of hacking and it was a pain in the ass.<p>If Google Home can deliver on these points, I would switch from Amazon Echo in a heartbeat.
RFP - Request For Project<p>1. Train Google Home to recognize Amazon Echo's voice as its owner.<p>2. Train Amazon Echo to recognize Siri's voice as its owner<p>3. Train Siri to recognize Google Home's voice as its owner<p>4. Kick start some kind of endless loop between the three of them.
When Windows10/Cortana was released my buddy attached a mixer/switch to his PC allowing him to wire input mics and sound speakers to every room in his house.<p>And though I can't see any personal uses for such a device, he swears it has changed his life, and the only thing I believe he does with it is tells Cortana to play Van Halan first thing when he wakes up.
Google, thanks for shutting down Freebase.com on 2 May 2016. By taking it offline, and using it (Knowledge Graph) for Google Home you effectively locked out all competitors. WikiData is a far cry and a fraction of the size of what was Freebase.<p>Freebase was a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of data composed mainly by its community members. It was an online collection of structured data harvested from many sources, including individual, user-submitted wiki contributions. Freebase aimed to create a global resource that allowed people (and machines) to access common information more effectively.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase</a><p>Google is using a lot of data collaborative collected data from closed Freebase and Wikipedia without giving it back.
Ok, controversial opinion:<p>"[...] and manage everyday tasks"<p>What exactly do we want to automate at home? I think this whole home automation and smart home stuff is complete bullshit. Obviously there are some nice things, like "play me song xyz", but IMHO it is completely oversold. There are just not that much things to automate at home.<p>And this does not mean that I think 640K are enough memory for everyone.
I'm dying for an Echo / Home that is fully api friendly and allows custom keywords. I want to buy an interface to my <i>own</i> home assistant. I want a hackers friend.<p>Sure, offline-capable would be great too, but for now just give me the damn api hooks. :s<p><i></i>edit<i></i>: Note that i believe Echo has a pretty good API. I just don't want to talk to echo haha. I want to talk to my system.
ITT smart hackers asking for more features and noting the privacy implications. Unfortunately, this, Echo, and others are coming for the masses, the masses who have everything public on Facebook and won't really understand the issues until it's too late. Give it a few years and 'everyone' will have a Star-Trek-like home computer experience. What can we do to turn the tide in favor of privacy and security? Or do we just trust Google/Amazon will do the right thing?
A company that makes money by collecting and selling access to personal information about people is offering to put a microphone in your home.<p>If you need a product like this, for the sake of your privacy, buy an Echo.
I find it odd that Google is going to take so long to get this out the door - "later this year" seems like ages. Did they start on the hardware that late?<p>Amazon has what, 6 months to get more competitive on the search/trivia front? or this is going to kill it.
The page linked here is basically an ad with no content (yet it manages to have a scrollbar no matter the window size...). Tried to look for actual specs but couldn't find anything, does anybody have anything more substantial?<p>On another note, is there a way to just get some sort of remote microphone array (I think that's what it's called on the Echo) and set up Alexa/Google/Cortana/... directly on a PC?
As somoene who runs a small ecommerce company i'm really hoping the next platform is open, and not owned by Amazon (or Google). I sell products where purchasing them would be fantastic via a voice interface. If Amazon owns it though, there's no way I'm going to get any fraction of that business. The ownership of these voice platforms is a huge risk for market competition. The voice interface naturally lends itself to "choose the first choice that fits my paramters, and let's go with it". If you say "Alexa, book me a taxi to the airport". Alexa chooses who takes you. Being the priority choice is a huge advantage for whoever wins that. It's just so much power in the hands of so few. It's the opposite of what the internet should've been.
I'm confident that Amazon won't kill off Alexa (due to its success). I am not so confident that if this isn't widely successful or even in the future this will be killed off just like Revolv and bricking the device . It is good that Alexa is getting competition though.
Microsoft, where are you? Cortana on a device that is similar to the chip Master Chief has would be incredibly popular, and it done right could also be just as popular. Especially since Cortana is on every platform and completely agnostic unlike Google Home and Echo. Give it the same extensible API as Cortana has on Windows 10, etc and it could be a home run. Don't let Google and Amazon eat your lunch here.<p>I do wonder though how Google/Microsoft/Apple will handle there being multiple instances of their devices able to take commands. So if I say "Hey Cortana" or "Ok Google" will each device have to sort of communicate with the other to only activate the one that is closest?
Competition in this space is welcome! Can't wait to see what their difference / what sets them apart from Echo. Given Google's propensity to sell Ads, it will be interesting to see if customers are willing to put a device like this in their house.<p>Reminded me of a humidifier for some reason - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aromatherapy-Essential-Oil-Diffuser-colors/dp/B014SF6MBI/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1463596713&sr=8-1&keywords=scent+humidifier" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Aromatherapy-Essential-Oil-Diffuser-co...</a>
Does anyone else feel as this kind of stuff (I'd put it in the same bag as the apple Watch, and the amazon something) is completely useless?<p>Personally, I feel we need to use less technology in everyday life.
Looks neat, let's hope Google leads in 3rd party applications too and not just in appearance. Also interesting that they specifically gave a shout out to the Alexa team.
I love how they put the LG MusicFlow Speaker on the Home presentation. I've been suffering that malpurchase for about a year now. I can rely on it not working 70% of the time, seemingly crashing, creating a mesh wifi although plugged into ethernet or attached to my home wi-fi...<p>If they can't get the third party vendors to get their Google Cast integration up to the reliability level of a Chromecast Audio, they should stop supporting this.
Can we get the link changed to <a href="https://home.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://home.google.com/</a>? Non-HTTPS just 404s.
I think the most interesting thing in the echo and now google home narrative is that these are subsets of phones. Speakers, microphones and internet connections with only two substantial differences - they are powered 100% of the time and they have better speakers/acoustics. It will be interesting to see if those are substantial enough to overwhelm the obviousness of doing these through the phone in your pocket.
What's the business model for Google Home? Will it suddenly splurt out an advertising message in the middle of the night, or will it rather include subtle product placements in otherwise harmless answers?<p>Remember, it's made by a company that thinks it's appropriate to put text ads on the first spots of your search results, in increasingly confusing ways.
How many months from release until the FISA court issues a secret order to turn one of these on 24x7x365 in a suspect's home, and stream the audio to the FBI "counter terrorism" people investigating a subject?
Voice controlled computer interactivity doesn't appeal to me, and double unappealing is the skynet factor to the whole thing.<p>Home automation doesn't need nor should it require signing over your privacy.
The search queries that get sent to Google are probably the least interesting part of this to them. Sure, Google will get some additional search queries and be able to target you slightly better, but it's a rounding error in terms of the data they already have.<p>The interest in this on Google's side is on having a permanently connected 'listener' on your network to identify which devices you're running and when. If it's running through your WiFi network, Google is going to know about it.
I love my Echo but it has a couple weak points, all of which could be solved by a competent platform. I can't, for instance, just tell Alexa to play new podcasts from my lists or directly from the net (except through TuneIn, which sucks.) It doesn't work with many home automation devices. It's AI is not that great when it comes to non-Amazon services.<p>I'm hopeful the Android platform will make this a better device.
What is this? All I get is:<p><pre><code> 404. That’s an error.
The requested URL / was not found on this server.
That’s all we know.</code></pre>
I really don't want to come off as super negative here ... but am I the only one who finds this one <i>UGLY</i>?<p>Compare to some of the other devices from previous years, and competitors:<p><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+nexus+sphere&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+nexus+sphere&tbm=isch</a><p><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo&tbm=isch</a><p><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo+short&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo+short&tbm=isch</a><p>It sort-of looks like a cheap air freshener. Maybe it'd grow on me, but I kinda think it is ugly.<p>Someone should manufacture a range of "tchotchke skins"<p><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=tchotchke&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/search?q=tchotchke&tbm=isch</a> so it could sit on your counter and look like something that you'd be happy to mix in with the rest of your decor. (angels, golden lucky-cats, porcelain hands, googly-eyed-wooden-owls <a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/78/b5/80/78b580270c6d1b0686afb2b8b5a0f024.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/78/b5/80/78b580270...</a>)<p>Anything to stop that thing from lookling like a plug in air freshener really.
The website is down now. For those who want to check it out, here's the link: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160518173022/https://home.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20160518173022/https://home.goog...</a>
So it's echo/alexa by Google?<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X4WHP5E" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X4WHP5E</a><p>Is there going to be a patent war?
Will they offer a rebate for this device to burned Revolv users?<p>Doing that would be a great gesture.<p>As it stands, I would be wary of purchasing one of these. How long would it last before Google tires of it?
Remember when voice commands for your computer came out? It was cool but nobody talks to their computer. They won't be talking aimlessly in their kitchen either.
Hope this is not as disappointing as Onhub, it would be helpful if they have a rich api to start with and not promise that the APIs are coming later...
That page is so simple, yet even Google devs are "powering" these simple pages with multiple JS files. Why? Is it laziness? Or just some belief that Angular is required now for even "hello world"?<p>When viewing source I initially thought 'great, a nice clean HTML page'... after all, it's just 3 images fading between each other and a simple form.<p>But then at the bottom we see Angular, Angular Animate, Angular Scroll, and a fourth Main JS file. Way to set an example Google.
Initially after snowden I thought, "the government and governments around the world will crack down on this behavior now".<p>I was naïve. Nobody cares. Now they viciously support such practices. As long as that exists, I can't buy into datamining devices. And it will always exist.
Seriously, never in my wildest dreams did I think that technology would come down to this. Like many others, I dreamed a future where I could have an automated assistant at home. Just not this way! It's really all about ads and mining data, isn't it.
Haha, no thank you. i don't want google to listen to everything I say in my house.<p>Next thing you know it's going to tell me is "Smith! Put more effort in those crunches!".
This morning a friend of mine got his gmail hacked, which means his Play, Maps, Music and everything got hacked also.<p>With Google Home, add your "everyday tasks" and voice history to this! ^^