![]() ![]() Home gave a detailed answer to the question of when Jimmy Fallon was in the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” while the Echo had no idea. On the other hand, Google Home carried on a conversation with me about Abraham Lincoln, telling me first when he was born, then answering several other queries about him without requiring me to repeat his name. Google Home couldn’t take a note or set a reminder, like the Echo can. The Echo gave me the CVS and also the nearest Walgreens, plus two smaller ones. The third was a nearby supermarket that lacks a pharmacy. A second was the clinic inside the same drugstore, which isn’t a pharmacy. One was the correct answer (a CVS), but with the wrong address. When I asked, “Where is the nearest pharmacy?” (a question suggested for reviewers by Google), Google Home was dumb. Google says it’s working on enabling multiple accounts.) Lincoln vs. I chose my personal account, which contains most of my search data. ![]() ![]() (Google Home currently only supports a single Google account. But, while Google Home couldn’t give me any info about my calendar (which is kept on Google Calendar, but via a different account), the Echo knew all about it. The Echo told the address of the nearest post office when I asked using the words “work address,” it said it couldn’t help. Google Home knew the address of my office. Google says that by election day next week, Home will be able to say who’s won or who’s winning for president, via a variety of queries - but that seems a tad late. The Echo piped right up with the latest average of polls from the respected site RealClearPolitics. In my tests, it was often a toss-up as to whether the Google Assistant or Alexa would do better.įor instance, when I asked, “Who’s running for president?” Home listed the two main third-party candidates as well as the major-party nominees the Echo left out Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.īut when I asked Google Home, in four different ways, to give me the latest election polls, it answered, “Sorry, I can’t help with that yet, but my team’s helping me learn,” the device’s go-to excuse. Google says it believes this was a bug that it will fix. In the case of both Google Home units, the app reported trouble completing an initial update of the device. The Echo, just a few inches away, had no problem with the Eero Wi-Fi, nor did the Google Pixel phone or iPhone I was using, also within inches of the Google Home. It says it has seen issues with Eero and is working to resolve them. Google said that might be because I was using an Eero router system. My first unit wouldn’t recognize my Wi-Fi network and I had to use a temporary workaround to get connected. I ran into some glitches with setup, which is performed using an Android or iOS app called Google Home. It snaps to attention when it hears the trigger phrases “Okay, Google” or “Hey, Google.” (The Echo’s trigger phrase can be set to simply “Alexa,” “Echo” or “Amazon.”) You can change the volume and pause or resume play using voice commands or by tracing a circle on the top and gently tapping it. The top is touch-sensitive and has built-in lights that show when the Home is ready to accept a command. You can get alternate bases in different colors. While the Echo is a tall black metal cylinder, Google’s contender is a smaller, more stylish white plastic cylinder with an angled top and a mesh speaker base. ![]() In my opinion - and, more importantly, that of my wife (whose taste is much better than mine and whose tech addiction much less) - the Google Home looks a lot better than the Echo. It needs enough work that, if I were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, I wouldn’t be losing any sleep about it - at least not yet. Google Home does beat Alexa and the Echo in some ways, but it’s remarkably dumb in others. Surely, I thought, after collecting all that info about the world (and about me) for years and years, Google would crush Amazon in the home-intelligence race.īut after nearly a week of using two Google Home units in two different rooms, my conclusions are decidedly mixed. So I was excited to test Google Home, the $129 Echo competitor that puts the search giant’s much-touted new Google Assistant intelligence technology inside a small, but powerful, Echo-like speaker and microphone unit. And while I love using it for some things - playing music and podcasts, setting timers and reordering items from Amazon - I’ve come to realize that, like Apple’s Siri and all other virtual assistants, its Alexa voice-driven artificial intelligence system disappoints a lot. Like many tech enthusiasts, I’ve been using a $180 Amazon Echo intelligent speaker at my home for a year or more. Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, executive editor at The Verge and editor at large of Recode. ![]()
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