Long gone are the days of having to be a celebrity or V.I.P to acquire a personal assistant to help your home or office needs. Thanks to modern technology you can now get the help you need for the low cost of $129 thanks to Google Home.
Unlike previous technology induced personal assistants like Amazon Echo and Siri, Google Home sets itself apart by being able to serve as a smart control center for the whole family. It’s Wifi speaker services offeres many options such as being able to stream music from the cloud, as well as through your ios or Android device. It’s voice command feature is its best feauture, allowing you to control multiple media tools in your house. With the right smarthome attributes set up you can control lights, doors, do internet searches as well as set alarms and timers.
This article does a good job of analyzing what sets Google Home apart from it’s competitors. In “What is New Media”, Manovich poses the question, “What are the ways in which the use of computers to record, store, create and distribute media makes it “new”? (page 20). When launching a product such as this one people are going to automatically compare it to similar products on the market such as Apple’s Siri or the Amazon Echo. The writer makes sure to point out that this productcan service the whole family as opposed to just one person as well as how Google Home’s fact checking capabilities are more accurate due to its access to Google’s long running search engine. Google Home is not neccessarily a brand new idea, but it has built on a conceptthat is already out and found a new way to make it innovative.
Overall, I believed the writer of this article had a strong analysis of the product. They stated all of qualities and capabilities and what makes it standout in the market. However, the article was very positive, and did not list at all any downsides to Google Home that may be a concern for the consumer. For example many of the Smarthome features such as access to lights, doors or speakers would require you to already have certain smart devices installed in your home or the willingness to obtain these features. The article fails to mention that certain aspects of Google Home would not work if your home is not compatible.
Questions:
- Do you believe that a product like Google Home will thrive in the market, or is it too much of a replica of what has already been done?
- These three companies; Amazon, Apple and Google are constantly at the forefront of the technology industry. Why do you believe they have managed to sustain these positions for so long?
Really liked the focus on tech “assistants” as they have blown up over the past year. I especially liked how you pointed out what makes Google’s product stand out above the competition—a crowded market has worked to the product’s advantage in this case, forcing companies to continuously improve their products and add newer, more innovative features. I think because of these added features, Google’s product will thrive in the market, especially since it is coming from such a respected, established brand that has become synonymous with innovation and forward-thinking. I think Google, Apple, and Amazon have managed to remain so relevant and successful because they are constantly feeding their audience new products, whether it’s computers, phones, music streaming services, or now, at-home tech assistants. They know their audience and are constantly pushing the envelope to create products we might not even know we need.