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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

Yea!

A product that has become pervasive in most households in America, that does it's one task, and tries to do it well. The problem is that companies built out these organizations and marketed these products as the next step of computing after mobile, and it's just not that easy to monetize.

My washer/drier, "all it can do" is spin clothes around and apply heat. I paid a lot more money for that "failed experiment".

I think Apple really should have made the HomePod earlier, and all this could be avoided. They were heavily criticized for not supporting 3P "skills" when it came out. Today, Apple is one of the better sellers, and has properly managed their products expectation from the start.

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You might have enjoyed the reaction from the normies at a party recently when they figured out that my family doesn't have any voice control anything in our house and they started grilling my (comically, for the conversation, nontechnical) wife as to why.

After much very polite dancing around the politics of "listen, it's just a personal choice and nobody here is judging anyone else, I just don't want my children playing arbitrary stupid music and buying things on my credit card", she finally capitulated and pointed out that "well it's listening, isn't it? my husband" (I was actively playing with children at the time), "would have better details, but if it's listening, that means it's recording and sending those recordings to Amazon or Google or whomever".

At which point the lady of the house got up and turned her Alexa off. I attempted to not die laughing in the corner with the children.

> well it's listening, isn't it?

It's listening, and so are contractors and employees.

https://apnews.com/article/9000fd56f68043e48a2de8a08997a1fd

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758491/microsoft-voice-r...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

Companies will pinky promise that it doesn't happen, and say all kinds of things about their security polices and access controls, but spying on people's homes is basically the entire point of these devices. What else would you expect when you bug your home with an internet connected microphone from a company who makes their money collecting as much information about people as they can, especially their most private data.

They're also collecting data on children, and even targeting kids. Companies like Microsoft and Amazon have already been caught and got nothing more than slaps on the wrist, but collecting kid's data is basically inevitable when the house is bugged and kids are intentionally playing with it.

> A product that has become pervasive in most households in America

You think Google home has over 50% penetration?

Between GAssistant, Alexa and Siri Speakers I bet it’s a significant chunk of the population.

Sonos now have a voice assistant (far more limited though) and many cars are rolling out some sort of assistant too.

I know plenty of people with multiple speakers and from competing brands.

Oh and obviously every iPhone in the last decade has it built in. That’s 50% of the population right there. Then there’s android phones, where I don’t know if they all have it wakeword enabled, but it’s probably another big chunk too.

The thread is about Google Assistant, not Alexa, Sonos, or Siri.

Regardless, do you think over 50% of households use the voice commands to the extent we call it "pervasive"?

Assistant is included on most Android devices nowadays.

Assuming smartphones in general have 90%+ market penetration, 42% market share for Android, and an average household size of 3, it seems reasonable to assume that 50%+ of households will have at least one device running Assistant.

I agree with the sentiment, but i don’t think you can go from 42% of the population to >50% of households. Especially because households probably cluster, so it’s probably strictly less than 42% of households use android.

You think over 100% of people use Google Assistant on their Android smartphone?

Why involve voice at all? Sounds like it needs about 4 buttons.

Sounds like all we needed were really fast horses too.

Except they didn't invent a car. They invented a complex device to drive the existing horses.

Well, this particular tech hasn't panned out yet, I agree. But with that outlook ("just use buttons"), you'd never make any changes, which is even worse.

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