More skills, more third party hardware, and pretty soon they’ll have matched Amazon.

Dumb BT speaker is not the largest usage. The largest usage is streaming music initiated by voice – no phone paired – whether that’s Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora or YouTube on Home. Dumb BT speaker is very low on the list, because very few users realize it works that way in addition to the other things it does (exception: Amazon Tap, which screams to people that it does BT.) A big part of the reason for this is Amazon’s onboarding – they get the Echo or Dot on Wi-Fi, but don’t do anything to guide the user to set up Bluetooth. You say, play $SONG from Spotify, and it informs you to set up Spotify in the app. This is how the vast majority of people use it.

Google Home casts to Chromecast, putting it ahead slightly. Amazon has yet to make any of the Echo products aware that FireTV exists, even though FireTV also has Alexa in it. That’s one of their oversights that makes Google better for media consumption. (For some definitions of ‘better.’ You can kick off a show from Netflix, but not specify which episode. “Play Black Mirror from Netflix on my TV” (where my Chromecast has been renamed ‘TV’) works. But that’s as much control as you have, and it has to be in that form. Also, someday Google should realize that no one wants to have a device named Chromecast7402 in their home, and should suggest ‘living room’, ‘lounge’, etc. as a part of onboarding a Chromecast device. I expect them to understand this late; They still don’t think they need to anthropomorphize their assistant. They do.)

I’m curious to know which skills and devices you’ve tried – they’re a mixed bag, not universally terrible, because each one comes from a different developer with different ideas about syntax and desirable use case. The ones that are the worst are the ones with convoluted syntax. The ‘getting off arse and doing it the old way’ is the challenge: any smart home device has to be better or faster than doing it the old way.

We’re at the dawn of this. The next phases are where they get better at recognizing intention without requiring specific syntax. This is coming.

Agree. Smart Home is 15% of usage. The biggest usage by far is dumb bluetooth speaker which is around 70% of usage. This is where show falls over… there is no cast function…

The skills are awful.. almost universally and in most cases its easier and quicker to perform the function the old way by getting of your arse.

That the opportunity to fix I think and Google is not doing much there as far as I can see which is a shame….

Google released their assistant to github, which was the move that made Amazon gain such quick developer adoption. To boost this, Google also supported MagPi, a raspberry pi enthusiast publication by distributing hardware (a hardware on top board with mic and speaker) so that subscribers can assemble their own Google Home out of a raspberry pi.

Google is late, but they’re certainly showing developers love as you call it.

My research shows that people use these assistants for kitchen timers, reminders, playing music, and at a distant third, controlling smart homes. Google is ahead because their device also controls the chromecast media (strangely, not when invoked from a phone.)

Adding the screen isn’t about supporting a legacy ad revenue business. It’s about making voice-first shopping easier, something amazon has pushed with its echo-only deals, but users are uncomfortable purchasing sight unseen even when they know amazon has a stellar returns policy.

The recipes skill now can show images as you step through cooking, which is a benefit for hands feee kitchen use, a place we already know the echo is commonly placed in the home.

Video chat is present as are song lyrics because, what else can you do when you have a screen?