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Comment by sna1l | Hacker News Reader

This article briefly covers Google Home's advantages in the conclusion, but I think they are pretty understated.

The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.

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I have a Nexus 4 and have used Google Now extensively since it's inception as a hands-free system in my car. Since the inception of the Pixel and Google Assistant, the system has degraded significantly. Now no longer works when the Maps App is in the foreground, instead Maps seems to have it's own VR solution that doesn't work well at all. Saying "Ok Google, send a text to <wife>, I'm on my way home" no longer works, it opens Now with a search for exactly what I said. At one point you could say "remind me to wash my ass tomorrow" and it would just work. Now it prompts "ok, when would you like to be reminded to 'wash your ass tomorrow'?".

This degrading of UX is very common with Google through the life cycle of products. What's going to happen to Google Home next year or 2 years down the road? We saw OnHub get castrated in less than a year after launch. The Nexus Q was still born.

I don't disagree about Assistant, but OnHub and Nexus Q are bad examples. OnHub was not castrated, in fact it's a first class citizen next to Google Wifi and is now upgraded with Google Wifi's mesh networking capabilities. Nexus Q was never actually sold to anyone; the product category is now filled by the Chromecast for $25.

I have both and Google Assistant/Google Now is a much better experience than Alexa/Echo. The google voice interface is much more intuitive, allows context to be kept in a conversation, and is with me wherever my phone is. With Alexa I feel like I'm constantly searching for the right way to ask her to do something.

Ya, this article heavily underemphasized the research Google has done in conversational systems. These devices won't have mainstream appeal until you can just talk to one with minimal instruction.

Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that this will change.

Had echo since launch and now have the Google home. The Echo uses commands that support some fuzziness. The Google home you just talk.

Amazon does have one killer feature over Google right now. You can buy physical goods of them. The people I know who make the most use of their Echo are also milking the free shipping on Amazon Prime.

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