By Lucy Caulkett-
Google has announced plans to launch a smart speaker in the UK before the end of June.
The speaker called ‘home’ was released in the US in October, but has not been extended to other parts of the world. Google currently has an established speaker that allows users to speak in google and request information, which is automatically supplied in response to a high degree of accuracy.
However, the new speaker will allow support conversations that enables the user to ask follow up questions to their initial request and also tap into the firms market leading Google Search service.
The disclosure of its rollout plan was made to the BBC at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
Powered by a version of its Assistant artificial intelligence software, it will compete with Amazon’s Echo range, which became available in the UK in September.
Speaking to the BBC, the firm’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh told the BBC”The trick… in these products is trying to really understand what people are asking for,”
“We’ve got so much history with people using our search products and people using voice queries through Android phones… that we’re able to much better answer these types of questions. All this data really helps in us making sure we understand what the user is looking for.”
At the moment, Amazon’s Echo speakers will have a six-month lead over Google’s speakers in the UK. Google aims to close the gap and probably surpass Amazon’s achievement, but the good thing is that technology is continuing to advance further with this development.
We are living in an age of ongoing advances in technology that is changing the world and developing our means of communication and interactions with each other and with computers. It wasn’t long ago when the technology allowing humans to communicate on mobile phones. With the iphones and Samsung, people can now communicate on phones and see each other if they have messenger, just like we can do on Skype and Fcebook.
Skype is becoming more widespread now, but is not even more than two decades old. Even Whassap, now commonly used is just about a decade old. Think how far technolgy wil advance in the next decade or two at the rate it is going now.