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Google Home Beats Amazon Echo in Q1 2018 Smart Speaker Shipments

225 points by myroon5 8y ago

dr1337 8y ago
I've never really understood the US-centricity of most tech companies. Sure the US will always be the single biggest market but times are changing. With the rise of the middle class in the emerging economies and the global redistribution of wealth from the West to the rest, there are huge opportunities to leapfrog US-centric companies. Apple is probably the best example of a company that realises the opportunity of building a supply chain that can satisfy the demand of their goods on a global level.
- theDoug 8y ago
  Yep. Foreign certifications take time, and standards for manufacturing, communication/signal interference, and more vary, but not serving the world as quickly as possible is a bad plan for growth or community enthusiasm. (Story time: As someone who had to find creative means to get SO many US-only goods into Canada, even ages after their US release, this is terrible with electronics. Shure headphones were the worst, where there was no Canadian distributor, so I ended up special-ordering through an audiology clinic.)
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    The whole reason I went Windows Phone > Android > iOS was because Microsoft took 17 months to get their latest Lumia phone to singapore. Despite the fact windows phone was used a lot in Asia. Microsoft killed themselves off by not being able to do what Apple can do with world wide release. Now I never see windows phones at all in Asia.
- tootie 8y ago
  Doesn't Android have massively more global market share than iOS?
  - dr1337 8y ago
    It does but not where it matters. You want places that are willing to fork out big money for flagship phones. An example of this would be China vs India. China is a better market to be in to maximise profitability as the Chinese are more likely to fork out USD 799 for a phone than the Indians. It's almost mind-boggling how one company can capture so much share of profits.
    - tootie 8y ago
      Tangent, but I think we've hit peak flagship phone. Mid-range androids and 2-year old iPhones are still overpowered for 90% of users.
  - wmeredith 8y ago
    It doesn’t have much of the profit, though.
- melling 8y ago
  “Canalys analysts note that the rapid growth of smart speaker sales outside the U.S. and Google’s strength with channel partners helped it vault past Amazon. A news release on the study comments that, “Google’s success comes on the back of shipments into new markets, such as India,” Both Google and Amazon are aggressively expanding overseas with their assistants. Amazon is putting the Echo in 80 countries: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-bringing-echo-alexa-80-additional-countries-major-global-expansion/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-bringing-echo-alexa-80-...
- IkmoIkmo 8y ago
  Nno other relatively homogenous market even comes close to US market size. The EU is great, a lot of regulations have been standardised, but it's still a place with 24 different languages, twelve different currencies, different national systems (e.g. payment systems, shipping, retail outlets, marketing channels), culture etc. It's still very much a fragmented place. So the UK, France, Germany, Italy are still to a substantial extent separate markets, all of which are less than a quarter the size of the US. Japan probably comes closest to the US. Then there's China, it has the gdp, but not the gdp per capita. You can take $50 a day as a threshold for the type of targeted consumer class for example, that's about $18k a year. If you look at income distributions in China you'll find only about 10 million Chinese qualify. If you take a $20 a day / $7k a year figure, you get to about 100 million people. Japan is similar, around 100m. The US figure for this group is 300 million. I mean don't get me wrong, you can't only have a US-focus. But I hardly see any companies do that. Instead they do first-launches in key markets and expand later on, and that makes sense. Some data from Pew: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/
bhouston 8y ago
The integration of the always on Assistant on the phone and on the speakers is a powerful combination. Sort of weird it is not integrated into Chome on desktop.
- DanCarvajal 8y ago
  Just a matter of time.
  - assblaster 8y ago
    It was as a plug-in, but has since been discontinued.
- hammock 8y ago
  https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-coming-soon-chromebooks-arent-pixelbook?amp https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-coming-soon-...
- Pxtl 8y ago
  I find the opposite. There's nothing more infuriating when I "hey google" my phone for something that Home can't handle but my phone says "answering on another device" and then the Home says "I don't know how to help you with that". My Home has probably recorded a lot of swearing after those events.
HeavenFox 8y ago
Google seems to be very aggressively pushing Google Home Mini devices lately. eBay just ran a promo where you get one for free with $150 purchase site-wide, and Google Shopping Express is running something similar with a lower $125 purchase requirement. Does Google have too many inventories on hand, or do they really, really want people to put one in their homes no matter what the cost?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 0x4f3759df 8y ago
  You can get a vendor lock-in effect. "Google when's my flight?" data extracted from gmail. Although I don't think they make much money from gmail, so ??
- wepple 8y ago
  Voice interfaces are likely to be a big part of our future, and in order to have the best voice ML tech, you need a ton of real-world data. I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see them pay people to have/use these things.
  - Narkov 8y ago
    I don't think there is much benefit for the ML models when you have 10m vs say, 15m devices. The real reason is the land-grab. People are unlikely to have multiple vendors devices.
    - lallysingh 8y ago
      I agree on the land grab. But for data, powers of ten are what we're talking about. Accents, regional phrasing, idioms, and mixing different languages together. The models are moderately good at basic speech to text and some grammatical parsing. But there is a lot more to go. The simplicity of the command set isn't an indicator of their aspirations. You'd eventually want a system capable of understanding any utterance by any human, at least as good as any other human. And certainly not just in command syntax.
Someone1234 8y ago
It doesn't hurt that Google is practically giving them away. The Home Mini has been $20 several times (inc. black Friday), $80 for three at Costco, or nearly free (e.g. spend $125 on Google Express right now and get one included). I paid only $64 for my Google Home for example (new from eBay). My point is, if you follow deal sites Google has had back to back sales almost since they launched. The $50/$130 prices for the Mini/Home respectively are largely fiction.
- skinnymuch 8y ago
  Yeah we have two Mini’s at home that came for free with different purchases. Same thing with a friend of mine. I would think that accounts for a good portion of them.
- romaster 8y ago
  Nothing wrong with sacrificing short term profit to meet a longer term objective. So yes, it doesn't hurt. In fact, it quite clearly helps a ton. Does that make them pound for pound competitive with one another? No of course not. But consumers are not necessarily buying one or the other on a price basis. Alexa got there earlier. Google has to do something to overcome that hurdle.. being practically free or getting stuffed into something else for free is a successful way to overcome.
  - tozeur 8y ago
    But there’s no point in giving them away for free unless future value can be extracted from those devices. It’s not a service like Spotify where you’ll get a month free to demo/“get hooked” then start paying the a subscription fee. Maybe the value for Google is word of mouth advertising? Data collection to improve future versions?
    - lallysingh 8y ago
      This is a platform war. Largest installed base gets the most integrations. Then you add on ways to monetize the platform.
Jyaif 8y ago
It just occurred to me that no product in the history of humanity has ever been harder to localize than Smart Speakers.
- CobrastanJorji 8y ago
  Newspapers?
corporateslaver 8y ago
Google needs to build their training set...
millstone 8y ago
I'm firmly in the "hell nah" camp: 1. Google and Amazon are pushing these with stupendous discounts, certainly below cost. That tells me that the revenue model is not the hardware. They hope to make money by manipulating me after I buy it. Nope. 2. Google injecting ads into the "My Day" information. Nope. 3. Google Home was found to be listening all the time due to a "hardware flaw." Nope. 4. Amazon devices doing the creepy laugh for no reason? Nope. I mean, come ON. They couldn't pay me to incorporate one of these things into my living space. It's below-cost hardware running bigcorp-controlled, remotely updatable software intended to extract my info and dollars. Get lost!
- calewis 8y ago
  If it can be done, it will be done. You're correct on every point.
- product50 8y ago
  Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    And we are just now starting to figure out that those people were way smarter than those of us who bought into smartphones. Hence even Google pushing the whole "well being" thing this year at I/O. (I've had a smartphone since 2009, but am strongly considering something dumber next time around.)
    - blackflame7000 8y ago
      There are 7 Billion people in this world. I've have come to accept I am simply not that important. I'm sure BigBrother has too.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        This statement both ignores the tremendous effect smartphones have on you personally (as opposed to others being interested in you), and the tremendous effect tech platforms have on large scale groups of unimportant people.
product50 8y ago
In my experience, Google Home is way better than Alexa. The voice recognition ability on Google Home (like my Android phone) is top notch and its integration with YouTube Music is awesome. I can ask it to play regional language songs and because it knows my YouTube History, it simply works. Also, I use Android Auto and am able to take Google Assistant seamlessly there too including the ability to play any music on demand by just instructing Google Assistant. It really is magical. I don't know how Amazon can even compete in this.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
  'Mechanical Turk', Amazon's secret (or not so?) sauce to create data sets to compete against the king of all data sets - Google. Plus, the product placement of echo devices gave Amazon a free run until Google Home happened. Still, what Amazon pulled of against an algorithm company like Google is still impressive.
- verelo 8y ago
  I find Amazon gets my voice significantly better than my GH, but I agree with you otherwise. I find the GH is much more useful, the Alexa doesn't seem capable of doing anything significant for me and it sits there never been talked to by anyone in the house.
- sjg007 8y ago
  ok... you’re enthusiasm is a little too much.
- brink 8y ago
  I just sold my Alexa for a Google Home. My experience can be summarized by this. Me: "Hey Alexa, what's the weather?" Alexa: gives the full weather report Me: "Hey Alexa, what's the high today?" Alexa: gives the full weather report Me: "Hey Alexa, is it supposed to be sunny today?" Alexa: gives full weather report Me: "Hey Google, what's the high today?" Google: "The high temperature in your location is predicted to be 82" Me: "Hey Google, is it going to rain today?" Google: "No, it's not forecasted to rain." I've had an Alexa for over a year now and it's never changed or gotten "smarter" towards any of my questions. Eventually I just gave up and switched.
jacksmith21006 8y ago
Not at all suprising. We started with an Echo but then purchased a Google home and wow! The GH is much easier to interact with as much more flexible in how you can say things. Then also a lot smarter. Think the gap will grow a lot after Google releases Duplex.
- spiderPig 8y ago
  Lol, I was waiting for you to show up. Mods, can we please ban this Google shill? Every post of his is needlessly bashing competitors and hyping google products.
- curiousDog 8y ago
  Each and every one of your comments is praising Google and bashing competitors. Do you do this for a living?
  - piyush_soni 8y ago
    Why can't he/she just be a fan? I don't see any competitor bashing in this comment.
    - curiousDog 8y ago
      Umm, read further through his comments. Most of them are blatant lies about Apple/Microsoft/Amazon. He’s the closest to a paid Google shill that I’ve seen on HN
      - jacksmith21006 8y ago
        I am old and historically been a fan of Apple more than any other company of the past. Well besides DEC. Huge, huge, huge fan of DEC in the day. Never been a fan of Microsoft as felt they never strive to be the best and historically have provided a poor user experience compared to Apple. But also MS just never seemed to care much about security and that really bothered me. Felt they had a responsibility with being the biggest tech company and dominated desktops. Took Google to do ChromeOS and that is wrong, IMO. But today I am more of a fan of Amazon and Google more than any other company. I still use a lot of Apple hardware but I am very frustrated that they just lost their way on being the best and more importantly on user experience. I am very into technology and more than anything the user experience. I love the interactions of humans and technology and this being the best it can be. IMO, the best example we have to date is the Google search text box. That same text box is used by a rocket scientist, grandma, 7 year old kid, brain surgeon and everyone else in between. That is the holy grail of UX. You type what you want and Google uses the computer to do all the work and you get your result. Quickly and accurately. Just that makes me a huge fan of Google. I can not think of any example in all of the history of computers that is close to what Google did? But then the other aspect is I am an engineer by training. Founded a couple of companies and therefore had to do a variety of jobs but to my core an engineer. So I spend a lot of time reading papers. The stuff Google has shared is just off the charts and no company in history can touch Google engineering. Not even DEC. I would say even surpasses Bell Labs. So many things. Map/reduce, GFS, Borg, TPU 1.0, Beyond Corp, Wavenet, and I can go on and on. It is just amazing the incredible engineering things that Google shares. I am truly in awe. I am all about fairness. There is ZERO question that Google provides a much better user experience in the things that are important today. Compare Google Maps to Apple Maps. https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ Compare Google Assistant to Alexa or even bigger lead with Siri. This is where UX is at today. Larry Page in the late 90s was asked about using AI to improve Google Search. He responded they are using search to improve AI. From that day I was a HUGE Google fan. Still an Apple fan at the time but that is where it started. I am also a big fan of Amazon and continue to not be a fan of MS. MS and Oracle are probably the two tech companies I dislike the most today. In the past it was IBM when I was a big DEC fan. I worked in VMS internals and was doing clustering internals like what is done today literally 30 years ago! The other aspect that bothers me is the privacy one with Google and Apple. Apple privacy agreement is here. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ In this agreement we have and I quote "When you share your content with family and friends using Apple products, send gift certificates and products, or invite others to participate in Apple services or forums, Apple may collect the information you provide about those people such as name, mailing address, email address, and phone number." That is crazy. Then when we look at China we have "Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy-betrayal-for-chinese-icloud-users/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy... The China gov tried to hack Gmail accounts and Google instead decided to leave China. These are the facts without emotions or marketing. It does bother me you suggest I lie? I try to share a lot of links supporting my points. I do get things wrong from time to time but never have an intention of lying. So if I post something that is factually incorrect then please call me on it and if possible share a link. But do NOT confuse opinions with facts as happens so often. I am an engineer to my core and I therefore tend to be very unemotional and fact based.
slackoverflower 8y ago
Google's search expertise was meant to succeed in voice. That is just their forte, like Facebook's is social and Amazon's is commerce. I don't see how Google doesn't win voice in the long haul.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  How do they make money with it, though? Because if it’s ads, they lose me in the long haul.
rock_hard 8y ago
In my expierence if you care at all about smart-home controls, or if you’re a frequent user of Amazon Prime, Amazon’s Alexa platform is the best option for your home. I prefer the Echo, over the Google Home for its depth of capabilities, wide smart-home device support, ability to play the most popular music streaming services, and slightly superior sound quality. In addition to its built-in features, the Alexa platform includes a growing list (more than 15,000 at last count) of “Skills,” akin to apps on a smartphone, that unlock capabilities such as reading recipes, ordering pizza, or calling an Uber. Not all of its Skills are useful, but the Echo still does far more than the Google Home does. The Echo is not the all-capable computer from Star Trek, but it is a smart digital assistant that’s constantly improving as Amazon adds more abilities to it.
jedberg 8y ago
I have both, and I've found that the GH is better at figuring out what I'm trying to ask. It's a lot more flexible with freeform speech. On the other hand, the Alexa devices have a lot more apps, and I think that's in part because it's so much easier to build apps for it, mainly because they have a lot of scaffolding in AWS for it. I've even built a few of my own.
ironjunkie 8y ago
Let's wait next quarters. Everyone that bought a Pixel2 received a "free"//coupled Google Home, I'm wondering how did it impact those numbers? I would never trust Google with that type of device in my home. Amazon I already feel better about it.
- apahwa 8y ago
  it's a land grab, doesn't matter if people actually bought them, it only matters how many of them are out there. one you have one you are more likely to buy for Google stuff. for example, the Chromecast works well with Google home but doesn't with Alexa.
SoulMan 8y ago
I am in India (very limited service e.g. we don't have Spotify or Youtube music.) and own both, however, I (and all my family members) find Home Mini not able to wake with even loudest "Ok, Google", "Hey, Google" from a distance when it is already playing something which Echo Dot flawlessly does. Also I am not able to play any station from TuneIn in Google Home Mini (Support has no clue)
mtgx 8y ago
Why does it matter which surveillance capitalist "wins"? It's us who will lose in the end. Amazon is now selling that data and surveillance technology to law enforcement, and Google to the military. I don't feel good about any of them "winning" in this market.
- nambit 8y ago
  They're selling the tech to everybody. It's an AWS product.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > Amazon is now selling that data and surveillance technology to law enforcement, and Google to the military. I don't feel good about any of them "winning" in this market. [citation needed]
  - thg 8y ago
    I believe OP is referring to these: Amazon: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-facial-... Google: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-pentagon-sift-through-millions-of-hours-of-drone-footage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-p...
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      OP says Google and Amazon are selling personal data though, that's the thing there's no citation for. I don't dispute the part about selling tech.
shamaku 8y ago
Exactly.. If you're so concerned with privacy then don't put a microphone in your home when both of these companies have strong ties to the government. You are being profiled or worse.
oceanman888 8y ago
They are giving it away.Dduring new years eve you can get 2 brand new google home for 50 dollar in japan.
CannisterFlux 8y ago
I don't own one, but I wish these speakers were smart enough to recognize their owner's voice. The number of podcasts I listen to where the hosts have banned saying "Alexa" and "Hey Google" is silly. They say it then apologize, or use Echo or say Hey G instead. It seems like something of a security flaw to me, as if websites had to avoid having "rm" on them in case it triggered file removal.
- apahwa 8y ago
  Google home does, it actually applies some amount of security using voice recognition. you can see it in action if you use a Harmony Hub. my voice has access to control my electronics but my guests can't
- Eridrus 8y ago
  They can both recognize your voice. Not sure about the Echo, but the Google Home doesn't do anything even remotely sensitive unless it recognizes your voice, but it will do things that don't require auth, e.g. answering questions, playing music etc. I don't know what the false reject rates are, but they're non-zero, and failing to respond to the weather because they weren't sure it was you seems like a bad trade-off for most people.
croo 8y ago
I wonder if there are any google/amazon marketing people on this thread. Anyway, you do think it's fine to put a device that -on a bit-flip- is able to record and analyze anything you say and inject ads to your daily routine anywhere and this bit-flip can be done anytime because it is connected and updated through the internet without any interaction. We should trust the makers because reasons. What can go wrong, right? And all this privacy breach is justified for the convinience of not getting up from the sofa to order a pizza. I don't even.
- mFixman 8y ago
  Are you talking about cellphones?
  - croo 8y ago
    Yep, those are scary too. But with phones I can instantly connect to anyone on the planet and make photos and write up stuff I would otherwise forget and browse the largest human knowledge bases on the planet. For this I have to give in a lot of my privacy and hope that I can trust the device/software manufacturers - meanwhile prevent what I can. What does google home or amazon echo brings to my life that is so ground breaking that I need another data-gathering device? I may come off as ignorant because I probably am. But I'll reconsider if somebody seriously can tell me how vastly these devices improved their life.
    - PerfectElement 8y ago
      Just like cellphones, it adds convenience to one's life. I can ask it to play an album or my favorite news while cooking or driving without having to stop what I'm doing to deal with a small graphical interface. The killer feature for me is being able to add stuff to our family grocery list. It's so much better than opening an app, swiping around and typing on a tiny keyboard. Once you get used to doing things via voice it's hard to go back.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > I can't believe people have different values from me. I don't find it all that unbelievable. Convenience is a hell of a drug, and the practical negative impact on someone's life from this kind of service is...what exactly?
chewz 8y ago
My father 88 years old is very conservative and anti-technical, he even doesn't use mobile phone, never got on the internet or e-mail (unlike my Mom). After seeing my Google Home Mini demonstration his reaction was - Can I also get one?
- thushan 8y ago
  What about it did he find appealing?
  - chewz 8y ago
    Well he isn't able to use a computer or even complicated mobile phone. And now he has a bad sight and his hands are shaking. So the ability to talk to device, to get on the internet, to get weather forecast, news, music he likes (he obviously doesn't like modern music), get some videos from YouTube on TV screen or call someone is a revelation. Plus the fact that it just works and is really cheap.
wpdev_63 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY "Why would people voluntarily bug their own house??"
- anchpop 8y ago
  Do you own a smartphone?
  - wpdev_63 8y ago
    I actually own an Iphone - why?
  - kruczek 8y ago
    Do you have any proof that a smartphone is listening all the time and uploading such supposed audio samples anywhere?
    - wpdev_63 8y ago
      Not all the time but might as well[0]. [0]:https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tramGG 8y ago
Honestly, I own a Google Home and I love it. I've tried Amazon Echo so many times and the entire experience is terrible in comparison. I also wish Google Home wasn't made by Google -- because well I'm anti-Google owning everything.
- lmedinas 8y ago
  What was a terrible experience compared to Amazon Echo ? Can you name a few examples ?
maffyoo 8y ago
Canalys are a well known google Shill. When the apple hit record revenues in China Canalys pretty much ignored them in their market report. A quick google shows that they are hardly unbiased or particularly accurate in their reporting
Bobbleoxs 8y ago
This is just personal experience. I have both google home and alexa (plus a dot). My observation for my use: 1. Google responds more to my command with slightly (not much) more natural tones; 2. Google recipe for cooking (I tried only once) is tremendously more helpful with waits and timers automatically added on; 3. Alexa has better sound for music although I only listen for working background not for serious music listening; 4. If you ask Google to say hi to Alexa it does whilst Alexa would say a long blurb about your contact skill is not available blah blah. But she responds to Google's greetings; 5. Calling "Alexa" is just easier than calling two words "hey google"; 6. When Alexa skills work, they are awesome but it really is annoying to remember all the cues for skill names which i don't. Overall, they are both very limited still. Right now I use Google a little bit more. It probably also helps that Google knows everything about me given I work in front computers all day but not so much with Amazon.
__bee 8y ago
Did anyone try Snips (https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/), the open source version of Google Home/Amazon Echo ?
- seren 8y ago
  If you want to try out, you can order a maker kit (RPI + microphone + speaker), https://makers.snips.ai/kit/ https://makers.snips.ai/kit/ I have received mine yesterday but haven't had time to play around with it yet.
- rashkov 8y ago
  I hope like hell that snips succeeds. This IoT stuff really needs to be open source. I don't want to fill my home with sensors that I don't control, and I'm technical enough to deploy some home brew stuff, but there's just not a whole lot out there as far as open source smart devices edit: Can anyone name some other privacy respecting, non-cloud, open source platforms and devices to work with?
  - rashkov 8y ago
    To somewhat answer my own question, snips has a pretty active community which should hopefully be a good entree into the ecosystem of privacy-friendly hardware projects (discord, twitter, and https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips#community-projects https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips#community-projects)
auslander 8y ago
What is the closest "Black Mirror" episode to Google Home? White Christmas with Cookie?
minusonly 8y ago
Where is all facebook news ? Why google have to pay millions in uk ? Why "dont be evil" has been removed from googles conditions and terms ? All this google news.. lies and lies !!
fareesh 8y ago
It always befuddles me that people willingly put these in their homes
- Crash0v3rid3 8y ago
  Care to elaborate? Do you have privacy concerns?
John_KZ 8y ago
Are there any raw numbers? Maybe I live in a bubble but I don't know a single person that has one of these in their home.
- ourmandave 8y ago
  Canalys had earlier reported a global smart speaker sales forecast for 2018 of 56.3 million. Article says that's 56.3M projected sales worldwide. From below link (from Mar 7), 47.3M U.S adults have access to a smart speaker. Or about 20% of all U.S. adults. Access meaning own or live with someone who owns one. https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-have-access-to-a-smart-speaker-report-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-ha...
  - John_KZ 8y ago
    wow that's terrifying.
kinsomo 8y ago
I wont ever consider getting a smart speaker unless, at a minimum, it did all of its voice processing locally and emitted an audit-able series of search queries. At least half the use-cases for these things don't even need an internet connection, IMHO. Another significant chunk could be serviced by push-only data feeds and device-local search.

225 points by myroon5 8y ago

I've never really understood the US-centricity of most tech companies. Sure the US will always be the single biggest market but times are changing. With the rise of the middle class in the emerging economies and the global redistribution of wealth from the West to the rest, there are huge opportunities to leapfrog US-centric companies. Apple is probably the best example of a company that realises the opportunity of building a supply chain that can satisfy the demand of their goods on a global level.

theDoug 8y ago
Yep. Foreign certifications take time, and standards for manufacturing, communication/signal interference, and more vary, but not serving the world as quickly as possible is a bad plan for growth or community enthusiasm. (Story time: As someone who had to find creative means to get SO many US-only goods into Canada, even ages after their US release, this is terrible with electronics. Shure headphones were the worst, where there was no Canadian distributor, so I ended up special-ordering through an audiology clinic.)
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  The whole reason I went Windows Phone > Android > iOS was because Microsoft took 17 months to get their latest Lumia phone to singapore. Despite the fact windows phone was used a lot in Asia. Microsoft killed themselves off by not being able to do what Apple can do with world wide release. Now I never see windows phones at all in Asia.
tootie 8y ago
Doesn't Android have massively more global market share than iOS?
- dr1337 8y ago
  It does but not where it matters. You want places that are willing to fork out big money for flagship phones. An example of this would be China vs India. China is a better market to be in to maximise profitability as the Chinese are more likely to fork out USD 799 for a phone than the Indians. It's almost mind-boggling how one company can capture so much share of profits.
  - tootie 8y ago
    Tangent, but I think we've hit peak flagship phone. Mid-range androids and 2-year old iPhones are still overpowered for 90% of users.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  It doesn’t have much of the profit, though.
melling 8y ago
“Canalys analysts note that the rapid growth of smart speaker sales outside the U.S. and Google’s strength with channel partners helped it vault past Amazon. A news release on the study comments that, “Google’s success comes on the back of shipments into new markets, such as India,” Both Google and Amazon are aggressively expanding overseas with their assistants. Amazon is putting the Echo in 80 countries: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-bringing-echo-alexa-80-additional-countries-major-global-expansion/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-bringing-echo-alexa-80-...
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Nno other relatively homogenous market even comes close to US market size. The EU is great, a lot of regulations have been standardised, but it's still a place with 24 different languages, twelve different currencies, different national systems (e.g. payment systems, shipping, retail outlets, marketing channels), culture etc. It's still very much a fragmented place. So the UK, France, Germany, Italy are still to a substantial extent separate markets, all of which are less than a quarter the size of the US. Japan probably comes closest to the US. Then there's China, it has the gdp, but not the gdp per capita. You can take $50 a day as a threshold for the type of targeted consumer class for example, that's about $18k a year. If you look at income distributions in China you'll find only about 10 million Chinese qualify. If you take a $20 a day / $7k a year figure, you get to about 100 million people. Japan is similar, around 100m. The US figure for this group is 300 million. I mean don't get me wrong, you can't only have a US-focus. But I hardly see any companies do that. Instead they do first-launches in key markets and expand later on, and that makes sense. Some data from Pew: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/

bhouston 8y ago

The integration of the always on Assistant on the phone and on the speakers is a powerful combination. Sort of weird it is not integrated into Chome on desktop.

DanCarvajal 8y ago
Just a matter of time.
- assblaster 8y ago
  It was as a plug-in, but has since been discontinued.
hammock 8y ago
https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-coming-soon-chromebooks-arent-pixelbook?amp https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-coming-soon-...
Pxtl 8y ago
I find the opposite. There's nothing more infuriating when I "hey google" my phone for something that Home can't handle but my phone says "answering on another device" and then the Home says "I don't know how to help you with that". My Home has probably recorded a lot of swearing after those events.

HeavenFox 8y ago

Google seems to be very aggressively pushing Google Home Mini devices lately. eBay just ran a promo where you get one for free with $150 purchase site-wide, and Google Shopping Express is running something similar with a lower $125 purchase requirement. Does Google have too many inventories on hand, or do they really, really want people to put one in their homes no matter what the cost?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
0x4f3759df 8y ago
You can get a vendor lock-in effect. "Google when's my flight?" data extracted from gmail. Although I don't think they make much money from gmail, so ??
wepple 8y ago
Voice interfaces are likely to be a big part of our future, and in order to have the best voice ML tech, you need a ton of real-world data. I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see them pay people to have/use these things.
- Narkov 8y ago
  I don't think there is much benefit for the ML models when you have 10m vs say, 15m devices. The real reason is the land-grab. People are unlikely to have multiple vendors devices.
  - lallysingh 8y ago
    I agree on the land grab. But for data, powers of ten are what we're talking about. Accents, regional phrasing, idioms, and mixing different languages together. The models are moderately good at basic speech to text and some grammatical parsing. But there is a lot more to go. The simplicity of the command set isn't an indicator of their aspirations. You'd eventually want a system capable of understanding any utterance by any human, at least as good as any other human. And certainly not just in command syntax.

Someone1234 8y ago

It doesn't hurt that Google is practically giving them away. The Home Mini has been $20 several times (inc. black Friday), $80 for three at Costco, or nearly free (e.g. spend $125 on Google Express right now and get one included). I paid only $64 for my Google Home for example (new from eBay). My point is, if you follow deal sites Google has had back to back sales almost since they launched. The $50/$130 prices for the Mini/Home respectively are largely fiction.

skinnymuch 8y ago
Yeah we have two Mini’s at home that came for free with different purchases. Same thing with a friend of mine. I would think that accounts for a good portion of them.
romaster 8y ago
Nothing wrong with sacrificing short term profit to meet a longer term objective. So yes, it doesn't hurt. In fact, it quite clearly helps a ton. Does that make them pound for pound competitive with one another? No of course not. But consumers are not necessarily buying one or the other on a price basis. Alexa got there earlier. Google has to do something to overcome that hurdle.. being practically free or getting stuffed into something else for free is a successful way to overcome.
- tozeur 8y ago
  But there’s no point in giving them away for free unless future value can be extracted from those devices. It’s not a service like Spotify where you’ll get a month free to demo/“get hooked” then start paying the a subscription fee. Maybe the value for Google is word of mouth advertising? Data collection to improve future versions?
  - lallysingh 8y ago
    This is a platform war. Largest installed base gets the most integrations. Then you add on ways to monetize the platform.

Jyaif 8y ago

It just occurred to me that no product in the history of humanity has ever been harder to localize than Smart Speakers.

CobrastanJorji 8y ago
Newspapers?

corporateslaver 8y ago

Google needs to build their training set...

millstone 8y ago

I'm firmly in the "hell nah" camp: 1. Google and Amazon are pushing these with stupendous discounts, certainly below cost. That tells me that the revenue model is not the hardware. They hope to make money by manipulating me after I buy it. Nope. 2. Google injecting ads into the "My Day" information. Nope. 3. Google Home was found to be listening all the time due to a "hardware flaw." Nope. 4. Amazon devices doing the creepy laugh for no reason? Nope. I mean, come ON. They couldn't pay me to incorporate one of these things into my living space. It's below-cost hardware running bigcorp-controlled, remotely updatable software intended to extract my info and dollars. Get lost!

calewis 8y ago
If it can be done, it will be done. You're correct on every point.
product50 8y ago
Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  And we are just now starting to figure out that those people were way smarter than those of us who bought into smartphones. Hence even Google pushing the whole "well being" thing this year at I/O. (I've had a smartphone since 2009, but am strongly considering something dumber next time around.)
  - blackflame7000 8y ago
    There are 7 Billion people in this world. I've have come to accept I am simply not that important. I'm sure BigBrother has too.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      This statement both ignores the tremendous effect smartphones have on you personally (as opposed to others being interested in you), and the tremendous effect tech platforms have on large scale groups of unimportant people.

product50 8y ago

In my experience, Google Home is way better than Alexa. The voice recognition ability on Google Home (like my Android phone) is top notch and its integration with YouTube Music is awesome. I can ask it to play regional language songs and because it knows my YouTube History, it simply works. Also, I use Android Auto and am able to take Google Assistant seamlessly there too including the ability to play any music on demand by just instructing Google Assistant. It really is magical. I don't know how Amazon can even compete in this.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
'Mechanical Turk', Amazon's secret (or not so?) sauce to create data sets to compete against the king of all data sets - Google. Plus, the product placement of echo devices gave Amazon a free run until Google Home happened. Still, what Amazon pulled of against an algorithm company like Google is still impressive.
verelo 8y ago
I find Amazon gets my voice significantly better than my GH, but I agree with you otherwise. I find the GH is much more useful, the Alexa doesn't seem capable of doing anything significant for me and it sits there never been talked to by anyone in the house.
sjg007 8y ago
ok... you’re enthusiasm is a little too much.
brink 8y ago
I just sold my Alexa for a Google Home. My experience can be summarized by this. Me: "Hey Alexa, what's the weather?" Alexa: gives the full weather report Me: "Hey Alexa, what's the high today?" Alexa: gives the full weather report Me: "Hey Alexa, is it supposed to be sunny today?" Alexa: gives full weather report Me: "Hey Google, what's the high today?" Google: "The high temperature in your location is predicted to be 82" Me: "Hey Google, is it going to rain today?" Google: "No, it's not forecasted to rain." I've had an Alexa for over a year now and it's never changed or gotten "smarter" towards any of my questions. Eventually I just gave up and switched.

jacksmith21006 8y ago

Not at all suprising. We started with an Echo but then purchased a Google home and wow! The GH is much easier to interact with as much more flexible in how you can say things. Then also a lot smarter. Think the gap will grow a lot after Google releases Duplex.

spiderPig 8y ago
Lol, I was waiting for you to show up. Mods, can we please ban this Google shill? Every post of his is needlessly bashing competitors and hyping google products.
curiousDog 8y ago
Each and every one of your comments is praising Google and bashing competitors. Do you do this for a living?
- piyush_soni 8y ago
  Why can't he/she just be a fan? I don't see any competitor bashing in this comment.
  - curiousDog 8y ago
    Umm, read further through his comments. Most of them are blatant lies about Apple/Microsoft/Amazon. He’s the closest to a paid Google shill that I’ve seen on HN
    - jacksmith21006 8y ago
      I am old and historically been a fan of Apple more than any other company of the past. Well besides DEC. Huge, huge, huge fan of DEC in the day. Never been a fan of Microsoft as felt they never strive to be the best and historically have provided a poor user experience compared to Apple. But also MS just never seemed to care much about security and that really bothered me. Felt they had a responsibility with being the biggest tech company and dominated desktops. Took Google to do ChromeOS and that is wrong, IMO. But today I am more of a fan of Amazon and Google more than any other company. I still use a lot of Apple hardware but I am very frustrated that they just lost their way on being the best and more importantly on user experience. I am very into technology and more than anything the user experience. I love the interactions of humans and technology and this being the best it can be. IMO, the best example we have to date is the Google search text box. That same text box is used by a rocket scientist, grandma, 7 year old kid, brain surgeon and everyone else in between. That is the holy grail of UX. You type what you want and Google uses the computer to do all the work and you get your result. Quickly and accurately. Just that makes me a huge fan of Google. I can not think of any example in all of the history of computers that is close to what Google did? But then the other aspect is I am an engineer by training. Founded a couple of companies and therefore had to do a variety of jobs but to my core an engineer. So I spend a lot of time reading papers. The stuff Google has shared is just off the charts and no company in history can touch Google engineering. Not even DEC. I would say even surpasses Bell Labs. So many things. Map/reduce, GFS, Borg, TPU 1.0, Beyond Corp, Wavenet, and I can go on and on. It is just amazing the incredible engineering things that Google shares. I am truly in awe. I am all about fairness. There is ZERO question that Google provides a much better user experience in the things that are important today. Compare Google Maps to Apple Maps. https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ Compare Google Assistant to Alexa or even bigger lead with Siri. This is where UX is at today. Larry Page in the late 90s was asked about using AI to improve Google Search. He responded they are using search to improve AI. From that day I was a HUGE Google fan. Still an Apple fan at the time but that is where it started. I am also a big fan of Amazon and continue to not be a fan of MS. MS and Oracle are probably the two tech companies I dislike the most today. In the past it was IBM when I was a big DEC fan. I worked in VMS internals and was doing clustering internals like what is done today literally 30 years ago! The other aspect that bothers me is the privacy one with Google and Apple. Apple privacy agreement is here. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ In this agreement we have and I quote "When you share your content with family and friends using Apple products, send gift certificates and products, or invite others to participate in Apple services or forums, Apple may collect the information you provide about those people such as name, mailing address, email address, and phone number." That is crazy. Then when we look at China we have "Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy-betrayal-for-chinese-icloud-users/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy... The China gov tried to hack Gmail accounts and Google instead decided to leave China. These are the facts without emotions or marketing. It does bother me you suggest I lie? I try to share a lot of links supporting my points. I do get things wrong from time to time but never have an intention of lying. So if I post something that is factually incorrect then please call me on it and if possible share a link. But do NOT confuse opinions with facts as happens so often. I am an engineer to my core and I therefore tend to be very unemotional and fact based.

slackoverflower 8y ago

Google's search expertise was meant to succeed in voice. That is just their forte, like Facebook's is social and Amazon's is commerce. I don't see how Google doesn't win voice in the long haul.

wmeredith 8y ago
How do they make money with it, though? Because if it’s ads, they lose me in the long haul.

rock_hard 8y ago

In my expierence if you care at all about smart-home controls, or if you’re a frequent user of Amazon Prime, Amazon’s Alexa platform is the best option for your home. I prefer the Echo, over the Google Home for its depth of capabilities, wide smart-home device support, ability to play the most popular music streaming services, and slightly superior sound quality. In addition to its built-in features, the Alexa platform includes a growing list (more than 15,000 at last count) of “Skills,” akin to apps on a smartphone, that unlock capabilities such as reading recipes, ordering pizza, or calling an Uber. Not all of its Skills are useful, but the Echo still does far more than the Google Home does. The Echo is not the all-capable computer from Star Trek, but it is a smart digital assistant that’s constantly improving as Amazon adds more abilities to it.

jedberg 8y ago

I have both, and I've found that the GH is better at figuring out what I'm trying to ask. It's a lot more flexible with freeform speech. On the other hand, the Alexa devices have a lot more apps, and I think that's in part because it's so much easier to build apps for it, mainly because they have a lot of scaffolding in AWS for it. I've even built a few of my own.

ironjunkie 8y ago

Let's wait next quarters. Everyone that bought a Pixel2 received a "free"//coupled Google Home, I'm wondering how did it impact those numbers? I would never trust Google with that type of device in my home. Amazon I already feel better about it.

apahwa 8y ago
it's a land grab, doesn't matter if people actually bought them, it only matters how many of them are out there. one you have one you are more likely to buy for Google stuff. for example, the Chromecast works well with Google home but doesn't with Alexa.

SoulMan 8y ago

I am in India (very limited service e.g. we don't have Spotify or Youtube music.) and own both, however, I (and all my family members) find Home Mini not able to wake with even loudest "Ok, Google", "Hey, Google" from a distance when it is already playing something which Echo Dot flawlessly does. Also I am not able to play any station from TuneIn in Google Home Mini (Support has no clue)

mtgx 8y ago

Why does it matter which surveillance capitalist "wins"? It's us who will lose in the end. Amazon is now selling that data and surveillance technology to law enforcement, and Google to the military. I don't feel good about any of them "winning" in this market.

nambit 8y ago
They're selling the tech to everybody. It's an AWS product.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
> Amazon is now selling that data and surveillance technology to law enforcement, and Google to the military. I don't feel good about any of them "winning" in this market. [citation needed]
- thg 8y ago
  I believe OP is referring to these: Amazon: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-facial-... Google: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-pentagon-sift-through-millions-of-hours-of-drone-footage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-p...
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    OP says Google and Amazon are selling personal data though, that's the thing there's no citation for. I don't dispute the part about selling tech.

shamaku 8y ago

Exactly.. If you're so concerned with privacy then don't put a microphone in your home when both of these companies have strong ties to the government. You are being profiled or worse.

oceanman888 8y ago

They are giving it away.Dduring new years eve you can get 2 brand new google home for 50 dollar in japan.

CannisterFlux 8y ago

I don't own one, but I wish these speakers were smart enough to recognize their owner's voice. The number of podcasts I listen to where the hosts have banned saying "Alexa" and "Hey Google" is silly. They say it then apologize, or use Echo or say Hey G instead. It seems like something of a security flaw to me, as if websites had to avoid having "rm" on them in case it triggered file removal.

apahwa 8y ago
Google home does, it actually applies some amount of security using voice recognition. you can see it in action if you use a Harmony Hub. my voice has access to control my electronics but my guests can't
Eridrus 8y ago
They can both recognize your voice. Not sure about the Echo, but the Google Home doesn't do anything even remotely sensitive unless it recognizes your voice, but it will do things that don't require auth, e.g. answering questions, playing music etc. I don't know what the false reject rates are, but they're non-zero, and failing to respond to the weather because they weren't sure it was you seems like a bad trade-off for most people.

croo 8y ago

I wonder if there are any google/amazon marketing people on this thread. Anyway, you do think it's fine to put a device that -on a bit-flip- is able to record and analyze anything you say and inject ads to your daily routine anywhere and this bit-flip can be done anytime because it is connected and updated through the internet without any interaction. We should trust the makers because reasons. What can go wrong, right? And all this privacy breach is justified for the convinience of not getting up from the sofa to order a pizza. I don't even.

mFixman 8y ago
Are you talking about cellphones?
- croo 8y ago
  Yep, those are scary too. But with phones I can instantly connect to anyone on the planet and make photos and write up stuff I would otherwise forget and browse the largest human knowledge bases on the planet. For this I have to give in a lot of my privacy and hope that I can trust the device/software manufacturers - meanwhile prevent what I can. What does google home or amazon echo brings to my life that is so ground breaking that I need another data-gathering device? I may come off as ignorant because I probably am. But I'll reconsider if somebody seriously can tell me how vastly these devices improved their life.
  - PerfectElement 8y ago
    Just like cellphones, it adds convenience to one's life. I can ask it to play an album or my favorite news while cooking or driving without having to stop what I'm doing to deal with a small graphical interface. The killer feature for me is being able to add stuff to our family grocery list. It's so much better than opening an app, swiping around and typing on a tiny keyboard. Once you get used to doing things via voice it's hard to go back.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
> I can't believe people have different values from me. I don't find it all that unbelievable. Convenience is a hell of a drug, and the practical negative impact on someone's life from this kind of service is...what exactly?

chewz 8y ago

My father 88 years old is very conservative and anti-technical, he even doesn't use mobile phone, never got on the internet or e-mail (unlike my Mom). After seeing my Google Home Mini demonstration his reaction was - Can I also get one?

thushan 8y ago
What about it did he find appealing?
- chewz 8y ago
  Well he isn't able to use a computer or even complicated mobile phone. And now he has a bad sight and his hands are shaking. So the ability to talk to device, to get on the internet, to get weather forecast, news, music he likes (he obviously doesn't like modern music), get some videos from YouTube on TV screen or call someone is a revelation. Plus the fact that it just works and is really cheap.

wpdev_63 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY "Why would people voluntarily bug their own house??"

anchpop 8y ago
Do you own a smartphone?
- wpdev_63 8y ago
  I actually own an Iphone - why?
- kruczek 8y ago
  Do you have any proof that a smartphone is listening all the time and uploading such supposed audio samples anywhere?
  - wpdev_63 8y ago
    Not all the time but might as well[0]. [0]:https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tramGG 8y ago

Honestly, I own a Google Home and I love it. I've tried Amazon Echo so many times and the entire experience is terrible in comparison. I also wish Google Home wasn't made by Google -- because well I'm anti-Google owning everything.

lmedinas 8y ago
What was a terrible experience compared to Amazon Echo ? Can you name a few examples ?

maffyoo 8y ago

Canalys are a well known google Shill. When the apple hit record revenues in China Canalys pretty much ignored them in their market report. A quick google shows that they are hardly unbiased or particularly accurate in their reporting

Bobbleoxs 8y ago

This is just personal experience. I have both google home and alexa (plus a dot). My observation for my use: 1. Google responds more to my command with slightly (not much) more natural tones; 2. Google recipe for cooking (I tried only once) is tremendously more helpful with waits and timers automatically added on; 3. Alexa has better sound for music although I only listen for working background not for serious music listening; 4. If you ask Google to say hi to Alexa it does whilst Alexa would say a long blurb about your contact skill is not available blah blah. But she responds to Google's greetings; 5. Calling "Alexa" is just easier than calling two words "hey google"; 6. When Alexa skills work, they are awesome but it really is annoying to remember all the cues for skill names which i don't. Overall, they are both very limited still. Right now I use Google a little bit more. It probably also helps that Google knows everything about me given I work in front computers all day but not so much with Amazon.

__bee 8y ago

Did anyone try Snips (https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/), the open source version of Google Home/Amazon Echo ?

seren 8y ago
If you want to try out, you can order a maker kit (RPI + microphone + speaker), https://makers.snips.ai/kit/ https://makers.snips.ai/kit/ I have received mine yesterday but haven't had time to play around with it yet.
rashkov 8y ago
I hope like hell that snips succeeds. This IoT stuff really needs to be open source. I don't want to fill my home with sensors that I don't control, and I'm technical enough to deploy some home brew stuff, but there's just not a whole lot out there as far as open source smart devices edit: Can anyone name some other privacy respecting, non-cloud, open source platforms and devices to work with?
- rashkov 8y ago
  To somewhat answer my own question, snips has a pretty active community which should hopefully be a good entree into the ecosystem of privacy-friendly hardware projects (discord, twitter, and https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips#community-projects https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips#community-projects)

auslander 8y ago

What is the closest "Black Mirror" episode to Google Home? White Christmas with Cookie?

minusonly 8y ago

Where is all facebook news ? Why google have to pay millions in uk ? Why "dont be evil" has been removed from googles conditions and terms ? All this google news.. lies and lies !!

fareesh 8y ago

It always befuddles me that people willingly put these in their homes

Crash0v3rid3 8y ago
Care to elaborate? Do you have privacy concerns?

John_KZ 8y ago

Are there any raw numbers? Maybe I live in a bubble but I don't know a single person that has one of these in their home.

ourmandave 8y ago
Canalys had earlier reported a global smart speaker sales forecast for 2018 of 56.3 million. Article says that's 56.3M projected sales worldwide. From below link (from Mar 7), 47.3M U.S adults have access to a smart speaker. Or about 20% of all U.S. adults. Access meaning own or live with someone who owns one. https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-have-access-to-a-smart-speaker-report-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-ha...
- John_KZ 8y ago
  wow that's terrifying.

kinsomo 8y ago

I wont ever consider getting a smart speaker unless, at a minimum, it did all of its voice processing locally and emitted an audit-able series of search queries. At least half the use-cases for these things don't even need an internet connection, IMHO. Another significant chunk could be serviced by push-only data feeds and device-local search.