Google Home: analysis, opinion and features

The Value of Google Home

What happened in this fragment of my day is a small sample of how Google Home, Google's new smart speaker, can be integrated into the trip of a person.

Now we were the viola, the piano and the percussion of the orchestra. However, with the arrival of Google Home in homes, we started acting simply as orchestra directors.

With Google Home, the human being becomes the leader of the orchestra. ]

We no longer need to go to the mobile phone, unlock it, access Spotify, search for the song we want to listen to and press the button play . The future is much simpler and more natural than that. Simply activate your vocal cords and, with a simple introduction Ok Google ask what you want.

Communicating with a machine in this way is the ultimate expression of invisibility and technological humanization. No matter who in the world, regardless of their technological knowledge, can interact with such a team. And it's something so wonderful that we can not let it go.

What Can I Do With Google Home

Leaving aside the conceptual value that Google Home stands for – and the spoken interfaces – potential buyers of the product probably want to know what they can do if one of these speakers reaches their home. The possibilities, numerically, tend to be almost infinite, although, in general, these are some of the most common use cases:

• Play content on your television. If you have a Chromecast or TV compatible with Google Cast, you can say "Ok Google, put" Lost "in the room" . Google Home will understand that & # 39; Lost & # 39; is a TV show, search for it on Netflix and automatically start reading it. If you want to pause, transmit the episode or edit the series, a simple Ok Google lets you do it.

• Turn on the television with your voice. If you have a compatible TV or Chromecast connected to the HDMI-ARC port, you will not need to search the TV remote to turn it on or to adjust the volume. Just say to Google Home.

• Play music on the speaker itself or on compatible devices. Whether on YouTube, Spotify or Play Music, Google Home can play music on the speaker itself or transmit it to a compatible device. These devices can be TVs, other Google Home speakers, Bluetooth speakers, and so on.

• Access to Google's search power. From "what a camel looks like" to "how much is Barack Obama's wife". All Google knowledge is available to users through Google Home.

• Learn more about our digital life. Behind Google Home, there is a Google Account filled with information. Flights, calendars, tasks, maps … All this data can be used by the Google assistant to answer interesting questions. You know how long it takes to get to work, what flights you have recently booked, the outstanding tasks for the day …

• Control the connected home. If you have smart devices in the house (bulbs, TVs, sockets, etc.), you can easily control them from the speaker itself. In addition, you can define device groups from the Google Home app, so if you ask "turn off the lights in the room", it will do the same with all the bulbs in this room.

• Diffusion. This feature allows you to send voice messages between different Google Home devices. A very useful case: tell all members of the family to come to dinner

• Voice Match. Unlike the smartphone the smart speakers were not designed as one-person devices. However, there is data such as the calendar or Netflix preferences associated with one person. To solve the conflict, Google Home integrates the system Voice Match capable of detecting up to 6 different voices and associating different accounts and usage preferences to each one. between them.

What You Can not Do With a Google Home

Given its nature, Google Home is one of those products with a margin of growth and expansion almost infinite. All that a human being can imagine and transmit by voice has its place in a virtual assistant like this one. However, there are certain functions, still absent in Google Home, that would make the whole world sense in the current paradigm.

One of them is compatibility with pay TV providers. You can ask Google Home to play a series on Netflix or a YouTube video, but something as simple as "Ok Google, put the Formula 1 on Movistar +" or " Ok Google, put 'The Resistance' in Movistar + ' has no effect, the same goes for HBO and Apple Music.

At the briefing before its launch in Spain, Google officials recognized the obvious: they want Movistar + and other content providers to be compatible with their service, although the task is more complex than

In the particular cases of HBO and Movistar +, there is reason to be optimistic: On one side, HBO Go, the American version of HBO, is compatible with the Google Home US, so it would be a matter of time before the strategy is replicated in Spain.Also, Telefónica has integrated Aura into the & # 39; Google Assistant, so it would not be strange that Movistar +, also from the same company, do the same with Google Home.

How does it work?

In general terms, the Google assistant does a good job of recognizing the words. My wonderful Andalusian accent did not seem to confuse him. Nor the mixture of languages. If you start the phrase "Ok Google, play" I'm not the only one "Sam Smith" the Home is smart enough to know that "I'm not the only one" is English and, therefore, must interpret it as such.

In multilingual homes, Google Home can listen and respond in different languages. One of the users can converse with the speaker in Spanish while another speaks in English, for example

Detects the command Ok Google even in noisy environments or great distances.

Regardless of language, Google Home's error rate was much lower than expected. Rare was the situation in which the team did not know what he was asking because he had misunderstood the words that he was throwing at him. In this sense, it works better than Siri, available – in Spain and Mexico – only on iPhone and iPad.

In the same way, Google's speaker usually answers the most common questions correctly. Obviously, if we close the loop with very complex issues or an unfavorable wording, the likelihood of getting an error message increases. However, questions like "How much would a Madrid-Seville flight cost me next Friday?" "who was the top scorer of the Santander League" or "how much is the wife of Barack Obama?" usually general, a satisfactory answer.

me: ok Google
me: good, nothing
google home: oki doki
yo: pic.twitter.com/snCMTOaANh

– Nicolás Rivera (@ nicorivera9 ) June 22, 2018

The speaker's answers always have a nice touch, close and natural, that helps to break this conversation barrier between a human and a machine. The only "but" is the lack of continuous conversation. Each order must be preceded by the command Ok Google even if the time is tiny.

An example of what Google Home does:

• "Ok Google, who is Barack Obama?"
• "Ok Google, how old are you?"

An example of how [19659039] should it be:

• "Ok Google, who is Barack Obama?"
• "How old are you?"

The omission of the second "Ok Google" brings an added naturalness that , in the spoken interfaces, is essential. The American company is already working in this type of "continuous conversations", although they are not yet available in the Castilian versions of the team.

Google Home does not require robotic controls such as "upload television volume". You can launch orders with a natural and familiar language.

The initial installation process of Google Home is quite simple: Google account, device name, Wi-Fi key and little else. The "Google Home" app, on the other hand, is a world apart. Too complex for a team whose main objective is to humanize and simplify the technology.

If you have multiple devices with Google Assistant at home, always activate the nearest or adapted to the situation. All teams are connected to each other so that the system can establish a sort of hierarchy depending on the situation or the person. Some examples:

• If you are in the living room using the cell phone, the command Ok Google will activate the own smartphone of the assistant . The rest of the equipment will remain silent.
• If you're in the room but your mobile phone is idle, the Ok Google command will turn on the nearest Google Home speaker. The rest will remain silent

In general, the range of Google Home's possibilities is quite broad, but the feeling with this type of humanized products is that the margin of expansion is so infinite that, perhaps we will never have a virtual assistant able to do everything possible in this world.

And privacy?

One of the important points of Google Home is privacy. A microphone permanently connected to the Internet raises suspicions and fears among consumers, who may feel intimidated by the lack of privacy.

Google says two things:

• If you press the button located on the back of the house, the team automatically turns off the microphone and stops listening to what's going on in his environment.
• When active, the speaker only transmits to Google servers the words spoken after the activation command (Ok Google). The rest of the sounds and conversations are not transmitted at any time to the servers of the North American company. In fact, the device does not even save them in its internal memory.

If the US company complies with what it promises, privacy should not be a problem in this type of connected speakers.

However, we need something in consideration: the company usually spends 24 hours surrounded by smartphones of smart watches and computers. All with built-in microphones and active Internet connections. If Google wanted to spy on its customers, it would not need to do it through smart speakers. The own smartphone would be a much more valuable tool for this.

Google Home or Google Home Mini?

Ok, you have decided to incorporate a Google Home to your home. But now you have to decide which device is closest to your needs.

• Buy a Google Home Mini if ​​… you plan to install it in relatively small rooms – like a bedroom or kitchen – and you're not looking for the best possible sound experience.

• Buy a Sonos One if … you want a smart speaker with excellent sound quality. In Spain it can already be purchased, and for the next few weeks it will be compatible with the Google assistant

• Buy a Google Home if … you want a smart speaker with audio quality decent – though not glossy -, some mics with longer throw or plan to install in a large room like a living room.