Every year Google brings developers together and announces what we’ll be seeing from them in the next year. This event is known as Google I/O. Today, Google held that conference. They introduced some new software and updates to Google’s voice assistant. We also got a glimpse of something called “Google Home”. Google Home is a piece of hardware that lives in your house and allows you to communicate and gather information using just your voice. Like the Amazon Echo, Google Home will try to make your life easier by using your voice. If you keep up with the site then this might sound a little familiar to you, as we covered this possibility a few weeks back in Stories We Might Have Missed

Google didn’t tell us any information on pricing, or the exact date of availability, but what they did tell us was how this could be useful to us. Google Home will bring the best of Google’s already amazing search (Google Assistant) and put it in a compact, yet good quality, speaker. You would place Google Home in a room and when you need information you would simply ask away. There are no hardware buttons anywhere on the device. Google Home relies solely on voice communication.

Google Home is designed to play nice with your current smart home devices like your Nest and Chromecast. You can tell Google Home that you want to play a song in all rooms, or play a video on your TV. It’ll allow you to do things like set alarms, make shopping lists and purchase tickets to things. In an ideal Google Home environment, you would ask your Google Home to change reservations, play music, turn off lights and send messages. You can ask Google questions like you would ask a friend information, so it’s much more conversational. Like Nest, Google Home is designed to stay out of the way and conform to your home’s individual style. The speaker has interchangeable covers that come in a variety of materials and colors. Some of the colors that were shown off during the keynote were black, purple, grey and an interesting blue-green color.

Google Home will be available “later this year”, according to Mario Queiroz from the Chromecast team. Usually Google hosts an event in late September where they release some hardware, so it’s a possibility that we might see Google Home come out then. Because we don’t have a date, this is all just speculation at the moment. However, it would make sense that Google would want to get Google Home out into the hands of the public in time for the holiday season. In the next few months, Google will be working with third-party developers to make Google Home even better and more connected in your house.

Screen Shot 2016-05-18 at 7.48.41 PMIf you would like more information on Google Home be sure to visit Google’s dedicated website here. It’s pretty empty at the moment, but you can sign up for email alerts so that you know when Google is ready to release it. Will you be looking into grabbing a Google Home?

 

This article is part of our Google I/O ’16 coverage, to see more articles in this series, check here.

Kevin Nether