Google Home

“Hey Google” would eliminate a syllable and still be unlikely to be used in normal conversation.

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For those that have those Dot’s pre-ordered, you should have until end of November to return them and Google Home will be out by then. You might want to order both and decide which works best for you. For someone like me, who is already invested in 3 echo’s(and one more coming) and 4 Harmony’s, it’s a tough sell for me to ditch all of my hardware for Google Home. There is no doubt the software powering it looks superior to Alexa, but you know Alexa is going to play catch up. It has already announced it will support multi-room setups, and they can easily add more music partners, etc. They also announced that they will be natively integrating with Harmony soon. I wonder if they need to form a partnership with Microsoft for Bing search results now :wink:

We also don’t know how well their hardware will hold up, and as @JDRoberts mentioned, their IFTTT channel might now allow for custom triggers like Alexa’s does.

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And also not sound quite as stupid.

Ok… do I cancel the 6 dots, sell the 3 echo’ s and go with GH???

The only feature in setting right now over echo (and this is only for me) is the search abilities. I don’t use chrome… I’m not a big tv watcher anyway…

So, what else am I missing? I see @MichaelS is already working on the askAlexa equivalent…

I have the same question. I just ordered 6 echo dots last night.

To be clear, it would be an Alexa Helper equivalent…without an open API that is all I can do…

@MichaelS has an idea for a project, but as yet we have no idea a) whether it would be needed and B) whether it would be possible.

As for canceling a dot order, if they haven’t arrived yet, then I would just wait and see what Google home really delivers. I’ll probably get one to try it. But with the dot only $49, it’s a lot cheaper to add them to additional rooms. So it comes down to whether you need the AI features in home or not. And do you need them in every room? And of course how good is the voice recognition?

Like I said, i’ll try one, but I don’t think there’s anyway to tell at this point how it actually compares.

JMO

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I want to feel like I am talking to my house, or someone who is controlling my house… Alexa fit that really well. Asking Google to turn off my lights solidifies the fact that my house is being controlled by a faceless datacenter in some distant location.

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Well… settled… not going to convert…

By @Mbhforum makes a great point. I May just try it for for a couple of weeks and see which one the family likes best. They use it more than me anyway.

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Can you post a link to either of these announcements? I haven’t seen them in regards to Echo. Thanks…

Yeah. As inherently irrational (perhaps even silly) as it is, we humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize stuff, and we like it that way. Part of the Echo’s “charm”, if you will, is the illusion it gives of interacting with a sort of a person…and the fact that you address it (or rather, the service behind it) via a human name is a significant part of that illusion.

“OK Google”? Where’s the charm in that? I’m not suggesting that such things should constitute deal/no-deal decision making factors…but it seems like a poor choice on Google’s part.

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Ok…so I get one Google Home - put some headphones with a mic on it, …and hook it into my microphone /headphone /speaker system like I do with the dot…when I say Alexa she does things, when I say Ok Google it does things. Simple. :wink:

Or how about this…Alexa, “Simon Says, “OK google, what is the biggest planet in the solar system.””

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Harmony/Echo is a closed Beta, which leaked.

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I’m going to get a Google Home to play with…but the Dots I ordered, I’m keeping. They were for other things, like the car, work, and places I want to keep discrete from the microphone system.

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List of links to resellers. NOT WORKING :smiley: Correction, Walmart link is working.

https://madeby.google.com/home/learn/#buy

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I’ll be switching over. I’m already rocking google stuff. I only use one service from amazon and only have one dot. The only thing I’m concerned with is that I use both Wink (Caseta devices) and SmartThings for HA and the dot does allow me to use both of them in one package with one command set. Watching the steam they said they are opening up the home ai to developers. As for the OK Google its branding. If you’re use to using it on your phone then you’ll be fine on Google Home.

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That would be good news!

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Well… I’m thinking both…

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