
Google Home Beats Amazon Echo in Q1 2018 Smart Speaker Shipments - myroon5
https://www.voicebot.ai/2018/05/23/google-home-beats-amazon-echo-in-q1-2018-smart-speaker-shipments-according-to-new-study/
======
millstone
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!

~~~
product50
Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because
they think like you. Good luck!

~~~
ocdtrekkie
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.)

~~~
CaptainZapp
If I could get a dumb phone with reasonable fast WiFi hotspot functionality
I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.

It just doesn't seem to exist.

~~~
vazamb
Look at the new Nokia 'matrix phone' 8110\. It is a dumb phone with some smart
features and most notably 4G and WiFi hotspot functionality. At only 80
dollars or so. I am seriously considering getting one just as an experiment

~~~
CaptainZapp
Thank you very much.

Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.

------
product50
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.

~~~
brink
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.

~~~
blantonl
My experience can be summarized by this:

Me: "Alexa, tell Harmony to tune to CNN"

Alexa: _turns on the TV, and tunes it to CNN._

Me: "Alexa, what alarms do I have set?"

Alexa: _tells me I have a weekday alarm set for 5:30 AM_

Me: "Alexa, set the bedroom temperature to 75 degrees"

Alexa: _sets the temp to 75 degrees in the bedroom_

Me: "Alexa, turn on the great room"

Alexa: _turns on the great room lights_

Me: "Alexa, turn off the office light"

Alexa: _turns off my study lights_

Me: "Alexa, turn on the whole house"

Alexa: _turns turns on every light in the house_

Skill integrations include: Harmony, Lutron, etc. YYMV. But we have one Alexa
device in every room (8 devices total) and our biggest issue is waking her up
when talking "about" her.

~~~
jvolkman
These all seem like table stakes. My Home can do all of these, but I just have
to say "hey Google, turn on CNN" instead of the awkward "tell harmony" thing.

------
Someone1234
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.

~~~
romaster
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
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
This is a platform war. Largest installed base gets the most integrations.
Then you add on ways to monetize the platform.

~~~
pvg
Integrations aren't nearly the barrier to entry apps are so it's not very
platform-like in that sense.

~~~
lallysingh
That's exactly what they are. How well can you access your music library from
the platform? Control your lights? Ask about the state of your car? Your
thermostat? Your shopping account at Amazon? Access to the Google knowledge
graph? Your Gmail inbox, with the inferred fight information and calendar
data?

Now imagine coming into this arena with none of those integrations. Your
system can answer some questions about the weather. It can tell you that your
Imap mail account has 3 new messages. Everything else, you've got to do the
engineering work yourself to integrate, while Google and Amazon just publish
APIs.

~~~
pvg
They are just a lot less work (the platform provider does the bulk of it) so
it's not that hard for third parties to support a couple of competing
platforms. The barrier part is much less barrier-y than, say, desktop apps or
smartphone apps. The space is also smaller and more constrained - nobody is
going to invent an 'integration' as popular as, say, a snapchat.

~~~
icebraining
For now most apps are pretty simple, but with better conversation skills
(comprehension, keeping context, etc), developers might write some pretty
advanced ones. And if one platform has infrastructure that can offload that
and convert it into simple APIs, I can see it being a stronger lock-in than
smartphone apps.

~~~
lallysingh
Agreed. Let's remember how simple apps used to be in the first home computers.
$5 on a single floppy, mostly to convert duplication costs. As the market
developed, they got more sophisticated and became a larger moat.

~~~
pvg
I think it'd be hard for anyone to remember that since it didn't really
happen. Gates was complaining people were pirating his $75 BASIC pretty much
right off the bat, for instance.

------
Bobbleoxs
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.

------
HeavenFox
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?

~~~
wepple
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
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
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.

------
jedberg
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.

------
slackoverflower
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
How do they make money with it, though? Because if it’s ads, they lose me in
the long haul.

------
dr1337
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.

~~~
tootie
Doesn't Android have massively more global market share than iOS?

~~~
dr1337
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
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.

------
tramGG
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
What was a terrible experience compared to Amazon Echo ? Can you name a few
examples ?

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

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Newspapers?

------
CannisterFlux
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.

~~~
Eridrus
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.

------
bhouston
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
Just a matter of time.

~~~
assblaster
It was as a plug-in, but has since been discontinued.

------
wpdev_63
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9m45AIsGY)

"Why would people voluntarily bug their own house??"

~~~
anchpop
Do you own a smartphone?

~~~
kruczek
Do you have any proof that a smartphone is listening all the time and
uploading such supposed audio samples anywhere?

~~~
wpdev_63
Not all the time but might as well[0].

[0]:[https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/](https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/)

------
rock_hard
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.

------
croo
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.

~~~
wepple
> 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

Like a phone, tablet, laptop, Nest, etc etc? I’m not saying it’s OK, but Home
was hardly the first mover here.

> and inject ads to your daily routine anywhere

This hasn’t happened to me, once. I can and probably throw my Homes in the bin
the day they start doing this.

> and this bit-flip can be done anytime because it is connected and updated
> through the internet without any interaction.

Like the web browser you type all your concerns, medical symptoms, dinner
ideas, street addresses, thoughts into completely voluntarily?

I’d argue that people tell google far far more confidential information via
search than they ever will say out loud.

~~~
croo
Yeah phones are essentially the same stuff. And it's definetly not OK and
scary to not be able to trust a device you (have to) use daily.

> I’d argue that people tell google far far more confidential information via
> search than they ever will say out loud.

This last point made me somehow reconsider my stance. The profiles already
built up by search queries and gmails are probably more accurate already than
it will ever be with GH, it will be just another few datapoints to more
accurately describe a random person. But I still think it's inane to put
another channel in our daily lives by these devices.

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

~~~
rashkov
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
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))

------
SoulMan
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
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.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> 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
I believe OP is referring to these:

Amazon: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-
facial-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/technology/amazon-facial-
recognition.html)

Google: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-
the-p...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-pentagon-
sift-through-millions-of-hours-of-drone-footage/)

~~~
TulliusCicero
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.

------
auslander
What is the closest "Black Mirror" episode to Google Home?

White Christmas with Cookie?

------
kinsomo
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.

------
chewz
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
What about it did he find appealing?

~~~
chewz
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.

------
maffyoo
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

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

------
oceanman888
They are giving it away.Dduring new years eve you can get 2 brand new google
home for 50 dollar in japan.

------
corporateslaver
Google needs to build their training set...

------
John_KZ
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
_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-
ha...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-have-access-
to-a-smart-speaker-report-says/)

~~~
John_KZ
wow that's terrifying.

------
ironjunkie
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
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.

