The mega Las Vegas consumer electronics event is underway, and there have been a literal flurry of announcements coming in from Google. And while it may have been difficult for you to keep pace with all that Google announced, here’s a list of all the stuff in a condensed form.
- First of all, let’s talk about the Google Assistant. The company says that its AI-powered smart voice assistant will cross the mark of running on 1 billion devices by the end of this month.
- Google Assistant is present on many devices and a few smart speakers are also using it for voice commands. However, the popular and premium Sonos speakers were missing this. However, after over a year of promising Google Assistant support for Sonos speakers, the company has finally announced that the speakers will soon get Google Assistant support. And it’s not just Sonos adding support for Google Assistant.
Dish is also introducing this voice-based smart assistant to its Hopper set-top boxes. This will allow users to speak to the Assistant through the Dish voice remote. - Multiple announcements came in on the hardware front. One particular announcement could probably be the first one in this space to be powered by Google Assistant. Lenovo will be building Google Assistant Clock for the nightstand, worth around $80. From the first look, it seems similar to the Amazon Echo Spot, but instead of Alexa, it is powered by Google Assistant.
With the world now possessing over a billion connected devices, Google said that it worked with JBL and Anker to build car accessories that pop into the 12v outlet. The product from both the manufacturers can be connected through AUX or Bluetooth and has built-in echo/noise cancellation tuned for road noise.- Later this year, Samsung TVs launching in 2019 will also be Google Assistant compatible. Users will be able to link their Google Home to the Samsung TV allowing them to control functions like turn on/ff, adjust volume, change channel, switch inputs, etc through voice commands.
- Coming to the updates and improvements to the Google Assistant itself, the company introduced a new initiative called Assistant Connect, which allows manufacturers to make simple devices that tap the existing Google Home gear to do any required heavy lifting. They demonstrated it through an example is an e-ink display that can show
weather /calendar information. It doesn’t actually connect to the internet byitself, but has a connected Google Home handle and it passes that info on to the display.
As it’s pretty evident, Google is going all-out with its smart Google Assistant this year. The use of artificial intelligence technology for consumer-focused products is taking up and Google is ensuring to leverage its dominance in the market to get a headstart. In the future, expect Google Assistant to take a lead position when it comes to consumer-facing tasks.
