Google Home review: In catch-up to Echo, but with promise

Edward C. Baig , USA TODAY11:11 a.m. EDT November 3, 2016

USA TODAY'S Ed Baig compares Google Home to the Amazon Echo. USA TODAY

Ask Google Assistant inside Google Home what it thinks of Amazon Echo's Alexa and you get a gracious reply: “I like Alexa’s blue lights. Her voice is nice too.”

(Alexa offers no opinion of the Google Assistant.)

Civility aside, the standalone $129 Home speaker that becomes available Friday is Google’s answer to the $179.99 Echo speaker, and a potentially strong answer at that, though Google is still in catchup mode and too often answered my voice queries with a “sorry I don’t know how to help with that yet.”

Echo was better at answering questions on who was expected to win the presidential election and who won the World Series and guessing a song you're looking for. Google Home had the edge with some features, like "tell me about my day."

Still, the competition between the two cloud-based, artificial intelligence-infused, voice-activated digital assistants is only likely to heat up—and promises to get even better.

Gartner recently projected that the global market for wireless speakers enabled by personal assistants will reach $2.1 billion by 2020, up from $360 million last year.

OK, Google

You summon the Google Assistant on Google Home, with a familiar “OK Google” verbal command, since the only physical button on Home mutes the microphone. Google Home stands roughly half as tall as the cylindrical-shaped Echo and you can change its aesthetic by replacing its base with one of a different color or texture. Indeed, Google Home is meant to be shown off in the home. It slopes down at the top, where you’ll find a capacitive touch surface and hidden LED lights that come alive when you issue a verbal command or Home is responding to your request. This is similar to the lights that ring the top of Echo.

You can slide your finger on this touch surface to change the volume on Home, but as with Echo it is much easier to do so via voice (e.g. “OK Google, set volume to 50%.”)

Home and Echo each exploit far-field voice recognition microphones, and way more times than not both recognized what I had to say, even with background noise and even if I was on the other side of the room.

Both speakers sound pretty swell too, though to my ear, I’d give the nod to Google Home.

Alexa has a head start: I’ve been a huge fan of the Echo/Alexa tandem for some time. Amazon’s speaker has obviously had a big head start versus the Google Assistant’s own voice, which only recently debuted as a key feature inside the Google Pixel smartphone. (A non-verbal version of the Assistant launched prior to that inside the Google Allo messaging app.)

According to Amazon, tens of thousands of developers are building Alexa “skills” and there are more than 4,000 such skills already in place. Alexa has also expanded voice beyond the original Echo into spin-off products such Echo Dot and Amazon Tap, not to mention certain Fire Tablets and Fire TV devices.

For its part, Google doesn’t kick off its developer platform for the Google Assistant until next month, and you do wish it could do more right at launch.

Google Home still doesn’t handle some of the basics that Alexa can do, such as setting reminders or letting you add entries to your Google Calendar. It can let you know what is already on your Google Calendar.

Overlapping capabilities. That said, both Alexa and Google Assistant are already capable of delivering on overlapping vocal stunts: among them, adjust a Nest thermostat, turn Philips Hue lights on or off, arrange a ride through Uber, convert euros to dollars, solve math problems, set timers, tell jokes, and deliver the news, sports and weather.

And of course they both play music or radio stations. Google Home can play music, radio or podcasts from Google Play Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora and TuneIn, and through accessory Chromecast devices and Cast-capable speakers, numerous other apps. It comes with a six-month subscription to YouTube Red.

If you have more than one Google Home unit you can take advantage of multi-room capabilities to hear the same song in different rooms.

Via voice, I was also to “cast” a video of Uptown Funk from YouTube videos onto a TV connected with Chromecast. That's pretty cool and not something Echo is capable of.

For its part, Echo can tap into Spotify, Pandora and TuneIn, as well as iHeartRadio and Amazon Music.

Where Google excels. Google Home’s biggest advantage over Alexa comes with the rich reservoir of knowledge that defines Google itself. So Google Home can translate words and phrases into foreign languages—Alexa cannot do that right now. Within limits, Google is also ahead of Echo in conversational speech, the idea that you can ask follow up questions to your original request, without repeating every parameter of that request. I asked how the Google Assistant how far Neptune is from the Earth and got a detailed response from Space.com. I followed up by asking, “how about Saturn?” without having to repeat “from the Earth.”

Alexa could answer the first question but couldn’t handle the follow-up.

In another fun example, I asked the Assistant to “start instrument tuner.” It asked me which which musical note I wanted to hear. When I responded with “A,” “C,” “D” or whatever, Google Home played the scale for that note.

I like how you can ask the Assistant to “surprise me.” Upon doing so, Home rattles off random factoids (e.g., citing Wikipedia, the Assistant mentioned that “apple seeds contain a small amount of cyanide.”)

I also appreciate how Google Home responds to a “tell me about my day” query, with an immediate summary of the local weather and traffic, followed by a listing of upcoming calendar appointments, and then, the headlines from NPR, Fox News and other sources. I got hooked on this Google Assistant feature on the Pixel.

Unfortunately, for now, Google Home supports only a single Google account holder, meaning family members can’t ask about their own specific daily agenda. What’s more, you keep hearing how Google Assistant learns from you, but if all the members of your household start firing away requests, Google Home can’t distinguish one person from another.

Among the other growing pains I encountered during my tests: Google Home froze in the middle of a trivia game I was playing.

Where Echo prevails. As I pointed out, Amazon is way ahead in the skills department. And Echo gave a more satisfying answer to the question “Who will win the presidential election?” No, it didn’t respond with Clinton or Trump. But it gave me results from the RealClear Politics polling average. Google said it couldn’t help with this yet.

And when I commanded Echo to “play that famous song from The Wizard of Oz” it began playing the soundtrack.” The same query on Google Home began with a Spotify playlist that was completely off the mark.

Echo also did better at helping me findi nearby sushi restaurants.

While Amazon Echo costs more than Google Home, Echo Dot is a comparative bargain at $49.99. Its speaker is ho-hum, though you can connect it via Bluetooth to better speakers, just as you can connect Amazon Home to better Chromecast-enabled speakers.

Room to grow. The results you get with both assistants often still have to do with how you ask your question. When game 7 between the Cubs and Indians entered extra innings Wednesday night, I asked both assistants the identical question: “What’s happening in the World Series?” Alexa responded by starting an NPR flash briefing and Google Home came back with the frustrating “I don’t know how to help with that yet.” When I instead asked “What’s the score of the Cubs game?” Echo correctly informed me that it was 6-6 at the time. Google Home instead gave me the prior night’s result.

Suffice to say, there’s room for improvement. But having two of tech’s heavyweights push one another in the Home is ultimately good news for the consumer. Along the way hopefully the Google Assistant will remain civil to Alexa--and vice versa.

Amazon on Wednesday launched Amazon Music Unlimited, an on-demand, aggressively-priced streaming service powered by the Alexa voice familiar to Echo owners. USA TODAY

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaigon Twitter

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Thursday, 3 November 2016

Who won the World Series? Don't ask Google Home

Google Home review: In catch-up to Echo, but with promise

Google Home review: In catch-up to Echo, but with promise

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