Amazon's Alexa Moves in on Google's Android System

> What's to prevent someone from connecting this to their smart door locks?

August (the premiere door lock people) are very careful who they partner with, and wouldn't partner with anyone making an integration like this (they won't partner with my current employer for this very security reason).

2nd & 3rd tier vendors might not be so choosy.

Amazon I believe recently asked a number of custom skill makers to remove unlock functionality from their code for this exact reason.

Could someone walk by my window and say "Alexa, set the thermostat to 90 degrees?" Sure. That would assume the attacker knows I have a smart thermostat, also they have to know the name of the thermostat in my app.

Also, my heat would have to be on for it to really matter, and at the end of the day all it is really doing is increasing my utility bill.

This Exactly.. I am really afraid to connect advanced skillsets like Uber on my Echo - for that there is no authentication methods on Echo.. To add to the rant, the Amazon Alexa is one of the worst android application with constant unresponsiveness and I am not sure they can deliver on a method where the authentication can be through the Alexa App for the advanced skills

In an effort to prop up pixel sales, Google is not rolling out the assistant to all android phones. If you read the latest blog post about the assistant conning to the shield and other devices, they have very carefully used language that excludes phones completely. They said the assistant will roll out to android tv, android wear and I think chrome books too. But not a word about it being released to phones other than pixel.

Risky move, IMO. If it fails, it has the potential to take the entire android ecosystem away from Google.

I noticed that lots of companies are building Alexa in... but besides cars, the use cases haven't been particularly compelling yet, and would probably work just as well as a Skill or IFTTT channel.

And while Alexa has a lead in terms of Skills, the integration is so shallow that there is no lock in and I expect most vendor-backed skills to come to GH when the platform is opened up.

The fact that 5m people already have an Echo sure is something, but plenty more people have Cortana through Windows 10.

Here's a twitch.tv user that is streaming two Google Homes talking to each other...endlessly.

https://www.twitch.tv/seebotschat

Part amusing, part interesting in how the Google system is trying to pick up on cues in the speech.

At one point earlier today they were alternating the lyrics to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" for some reason.

I think it's possible Google had more in mind than just boosting sales of the Pixel - it's presumably much less expensive on the backend to support Assistant for a smaller subset of users, and Pixel owners are probably early adopters who will tolerate hiccups the wider market won't. My personal theory is the backend networks are being trained and optimized on a subset of users (pixel owners) and Google is making sure the product is worth the expense before hosting it for a much larger audience.

The example you gave asking about the the heart rate is my current gripe with Alexa. Alexa feels like I'm using an app via voice control, but if I could ask it questions and reliably receive answers like you described that would take it up to the next level for me.

I have no doubt that if Google wants it can get into the various partnerships, app addons, etc that Amazon's lead has given them, but if Amazon can't catch up to Google Home in terms of being able to understand and answer me without my having to get frustrated and just pull out my phone and search it myself, they're already ahead and as a user interested in these types of devices you already have me reading and considering switching. You're not the first person to point out that Home has better conversational understanding of voice commands in my searching post-reading your comment.

The flaw in Google's situation has always been its lack of a meaningful connection to consumers. It's why Google Shopping could never make a significant dent. That it's an intangible search & ad company, that essentially no consumers buy anything from (in the Amazon sense), will persistently haunt them as the Internet of things / AI / robotics / autonomous whatever continues to rapidly move forward in the consumer space. Maybe they'll start to change that with Pixel.

Meanwhile, Amazon is increasingly touching consumers at every possible turn, including soon to be probably hundreds of physical stores of various types. It's like trying to compete with Tesla in autonomous, doing everything just in the lab, without having any physical driving data.

If you think of Google's top services that touch consumers: search, gmail, maps, play store, youtube - it's all a million miles away from the tangibility that Amazon has in physically touching consumers on a frequent basis. Google is completely out of its element when it comes to doing the kind of consumer work that Amazon does, including when it comes to customer support. Today Amazon can physically get into your home in several ways, Google will probably always struggle with that (a fundamental difference in how the two companies are oriented and wired).

> I didn't even know till now that Google has a new personal assistant your thing that's not Google Now.

I'm guessing you're an iPhone user and therefore don't have much interest in Android...? There were a lot of positive reviews for the Pixel, both on HN and elsewhere, and most of them seemed to cite the new assistant as the main differentiator between the Pixel and other phones.

You're probably right that Google doesn't do well with marketing in general but it's hard to believe that someone who follows tech news wasn't aware of their assistant before now.

Amazon actually had a general purpose search engine once. That's what a9.com was. The company A9.com [1] is still around as an Amazon subsidiary [2], the search engine is not.

[1] https://a9.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com

If Amazon isn't a search company, then Google isn't an OS company. Search is pretty integral to Amazon, search being the main way that anyone finds anything on their site. Sure, selling other company's products is what they're known for, but they do a lot more than that. And funny enough, a search engine is one of them. A9 (an Amazon company) develops custom search engines and search technologies.

You can't pigeonhole conglomerates like that. Google is an email company, Amazon is a cloud hosting provider, Microsoft is a tablet PC maker, Samsung is a heavy equipment company. No wait, Google is a browser vendor, Amazon is a bookstore, Microsoft is the maker of an office suite, and Samsung makes hardware for the iPhone.

Or maybe they're all tech companies and specialize in multiple aspects of that industry.

I am not sure I would call that a money quote.

It very well could have ended saying "Google isn't an e-commerce company."

As far as I am concerned Amazon is a search company with two day shipping.

The other part of assistance is integration with the physical realm.

As a global store front and supply chain, Amazon has a serious advantage in that area... manufacturers are more inclined to cooperate and integrate with the Alexa ecosystem. Amazon's end-game is obviously "sell more stuff" - obvious benefits for the manufacturers. I can't see a clear vision behind Google's plan.

However, so far every device is a walled garden, a locked-in ecosystem - bleh, huge turnoff.

Is there prior work in developing an an open assistant/querying protocol for these kinds of devices? Some standard way for devices to get data after the device has handled wakewords and speech-to-text? It's a fascinating domain, but I don't have enough knowledge to bootstrap myself yet.

A grand total of 0 of the things I've tried to ask my Alexa has been search. If I want to search, I pick up any of half a dozen devices scattered around the room that has a screen, because I don't want to have to wait to have results read to me.

What appealed to me about it was that the examples given were simple and practical.

I would put forth that Google isn't a search company anymore. They spend more resources filtering out all the junk on the web. Search is a secondary function for them. The end-user doesn't see the filtering; publishers and merchants trying to jockey for position do.

Good point. Is anyone aware of a FOSS implementation of "personal audio assistants"? Because the Orwellian creepy factor is way up there.

Unfortunately the maxim continues to prove true: "nobody cares about privacy or security."

I've come to the conclusion that technical loss of privacy is inevitable because customers don't care, and that when the you know what does eventually hit the fan the problem will have to be solved with regulation. There will be HIPAA/PCI type laws around home audio, location data, etc., and a renegotiation of wiretap and search and seizure laws. There may also be some legal limits on private data collection and retention.

Of course malicious hackers and secret parts of governments won't obey these laws. We are in some uncharted waters.

Microsoft pioneered it a bit too early... No(t enough) people care about privacy.

IBM isn't a consumer brand.

Watson is all about marketing, it's not that impressive. The stories you see about it are placed.

Watson is a marketing gimmick.

Nice try, Watson

Both companies have significant image problems.

Google are socially tone-deaf and creepy.

Amazon are Borging retail, and have a major problem with Bezos being widely viewed as an asshole, with strong justification.

Mind: much the rest of the tech world does little better. Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and more.

I'm inclined to think that its the sector itself which selects for this, though in the selection process, the personnel (and especially management) are very mich part of the problem.

Android is used by over 2 billion people on this planet and Alexa by a tiny number in comparison. Amazon tried to do a phone and failed miserably.

Today more voice data will be sent to Google than probably all the Echo voice data since launch. They are not close in market share.