Alexa vs. Google

I got in on the pre-orders for the newly announced Google Home Minis

After playing around with the Amazon Alexa for the last few months I wanted to see what the differences would be.

It’s clear after just a couple of days with the Google Home in the house that it is MUCH better. Google has done an amazing job with their voice AI.  A query like “tell me a scary story” works, and it additionally will play a spooky audio track behind the voice. It is less repetitive about repeating back things instead of just doing them too which seems a little bit more natural.

It still seems like early days for this technology, but as it continues to get better I can see it playing a bigger role in how we do things. The biggest hindrance to it seems to be the difficulty in learning and discovering what it can do.

Google should consider doing paid TV placements or something, otherwise the only way to learn the capabilities of these things is to go out of your way to find things to try.

For now, I’ve got my smart plugs/lights connected to it, spotify for music and my gmail account for emails, calendars, shopping lists etc.