
Google Home Max is now available - stablemap
https://blog.google/products/home/brains-beauty-and-beats-google-home-max-here/
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Finch2193
Does anyone really find these home assistants to be all that useful? Echo,
home, etc. All of them really seem to be designed to get you to buy them and
then to sell you more stuff, not to actually be useful. It barely works for
even simple queries. The music integration doesn't work well with Spotify on
the home, and can't even add reminders. The echo has to ask "am or pm" when I
tell it to 'wake me up tomorrow at 8'. It's really good at understanding the
words that I say but this really illustrates the gap between natural language
transcribing and understanding. The only reason I use it is that it's perfect
as a handsfree music player and that has its uses in the shower, etc.

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pianoben
I find a lot of use in mine as a voice-control system for home automation;
it's great to be able to say, "OK Google, lights out!" as I head upstairs to
bed.

The convenience and _naturalness_ of the interaction is just so cool!

~~~
candiodari
Ironically, extremely unnatural for most "Google" interactions. Asking non-
trivia questions just doesn't work very well at all.

Asking basic questions like the weather, the time, and maybe my calendar
(doesn't work well with multiple calendars so while I look forward to when I
can use this, I can't yet).

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andy_ppp
I don’t trust Google not to record every single thing I say and feed that into
their advertising platform. For this reason I will probably wait and get a
HomePod...

Downvoters: I presume you have evidence that Google won’t use your
interactions with Google Assistant to better advertise to you?

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drngdds
Well, do you have proof that Google/Apple/Nokia/etc. isn't already doing that
with your phone?

If you're going to be super distrustful of closed source stuff by companies
with an interest in gathering user data and assume guilt before innocence is
proven, that's fine. But you can't do it selectively!

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andy_ppp
The incentives for Apple to do this are relatively minimal and Google has a
track record of hoovering up information on you to target advertising.

Almost as if it’s their entire business...

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synicalx
I'd say the incentives for Apple APPEAR minimal, but in reality you don't have
any way of knowing what they're doing or plan on doing long term.

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Angostura
Good enough. Occam's razor applies.

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habosa
Dislcaimer: I work at Google but not on this team. And I'm a Sonos owner, so I
think my feedback is relatively unbiased.

I got a demo of two of these in my friend's house the other day. The sound
quality is exceptional. In a stereo pair the sound was loud and clear
throughout the range with good bass as well. Very impressed, plus it's just a
nice looking device imo.

~~~
sundvor
I just got a couple of Minis on Black Friday sales (2 bundles; 1 Chromecast, 1
Chromecast Audio), and am extremely impressed even with those. The far field
microphones are so sensitive, I can literally whisper and it'll pick it up.
Also the speaker is very clear for its size.

Sure there are quirks but the ability to control Chromecast is great, and also
the audio is impressive for listening to Podcasts such as DotNetRocks from my
phone.

I hooked the bundled Chromecast Audio to the Line In on my Asus Sonar Deluxe
1.3 HDAV on the HTPC, which connects to a 20 year old Rotel Preamp + Amp combo
(separation of concerns!), and equally old (but since then refurbished)
Infinity Kappa speakers. Sound quality is great that way, so I didn't see the
need for a Home or the Home Max which I knew was coming.

So I can say stuff like. "Hey Google, play {some album, artist or playlist} on
the PC", and it'll cast to that if I want the big sound. It is _way_ easier
than navigating Spotify on my phone or using the Spotify software on the HTPC
itself (which is limited to 1 account, with the hassle of logging out / in).

I wish Google could publish server software for Win10 so that I could cast to
that as a Chromecast target rather than go via the Chromecast Audio. However I
understand there's probably DRM reasons why efforts for this to happen were
shut down.

As a PS, my 7 year old son absolutely loves talking to Google. It's pretty
impressive to hear him figure her out.

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dragonwriter
> I wish Google could publish server software for Win10 so that I could cast
> to that as a Chromecast target rather than go via the Chromecast Audio.
> However I understand there's probably DRM reasons why efforts for this to
> happen were shut down.

Audio-only Cast devices do not support DRM, so I don't know why _audio_
casting to a desktop PC would be stopped by DRM concerns.

[https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/audio](https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/audio)

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jjcm
One thing I'd really like to see along with the google home / chromecast
lineup is a projector offering as well. Something I can set up on a shelf or
mount on a wall that I can cast to or simply say, "Ok google play binging with
babish on youtube". Especially if it were a laser projector (something
currently available but in a very high price bracket due to lack of demand),
I'd buy this in a heartbeat.

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kelnos
Is this really necessary? Can't you just buy a standalone projector and attach
a Chromecast to it?

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alttab
So more expensive than Homepod and Sonos speaker, similar if not identical
features, from the one company that has shitty customer service? No thanks.

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hn_throwaway_99
I'm a Sonos user and love it, but Sonos doesn't have any assistant capability
at all, so saying "similar if not identical features" seems like quite the
stretch.

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jonah
Sonos just released a new speaker that works with Alexa (and I think others
coming?).

[https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/one.html](https://www.sonos.com/en-
us/shop/one.html)

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polock
What's different is this with Google home mini, rather than speaker size? I
can't find any reason for buying it.

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TrainedMonkey
I think it is only higher quality audio.

~~~
SirZimzim
And don't forget volume, a Google home mini is going be to quite underwhelming
in anything but the smallest room.

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thomasahle
Does anyone have some insight into the machine learning in a system like this?
Could you not do the needed calibration with well-understood math? Or are
there some difficult parts to the problem, where you need a trained deep
learning model to step in?

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mikestew
C’mon, Apple, I know you want to make sure to get the HomePod right, but
Google’s stealing your holiday shopping thunder here.

I only say this because $APPLE_FANBOI over here is willing to wait, but if I
weren’t I’d snap up a couple of these. (Reality is not fanboism, but enough
apathy to the product segment that three months won’t kill me.)

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john_moscow
>With the Google Assistant built in, Max is always ready to start your
favorite song, pause or turn it up, all with just your voice.

Does it mean that it's constantly recording every conversation within its
field of reach and uploading it to Google servers where the A.I. could tell
whether it's a request to play a song, a keyword to show you more targeted ads
or an insight into your private life that could be stored and sold on later
when an interested buyer shows up?

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mikestew
The answer to your question is “no”.

(I would normally add that this could discerned by the most minimal of web
searches, but I don’t want to disturb your narrative.)

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andy_ppp
Please supply said search, I’m trying to find out if there is a firewall
between Google Assistant and Google ad targeting but it’s very difficult to
find anything.

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mtmail
The claim was "constantly recording every conversation within its field of
reach", not if commands after "OK Google" are send to Google servers. For the
commands Google's terms-of-service allow (themselves) to use data to improve
any of their products and that includes personalization (advertising), so I
doubt such a firewall exists.

