Google I/O 2016: Google Assistant and Google Home to take over your world

Google announced a bunch of interesting stuff at its annual I/O event including updates on Android N, virtual reality, AI and many more. But the whole event mostly revolved around how the company has improved its search ecosystem and how it will be integrating this into almost every app and service and into our daily lives. Google announced its improved search assistant called Google Assistant as well as a device called the Google Home. Google Assistant Combining the power of search and machine learning, Google announced a powerful search assistant that will not only provide relevant search results, but will offer better answers to follow up questions. This is something what the Google Now already does but think of it as an update. You can put out a query and get an answer followed by more questions as Google picks up a conversation and keeps returning the correct or relevant answers. The service is already integrated in Google’s new smart messaging app conversational Allo to act as a chat bot picking up words from your conversations and giving suggestions, say maybe a coffee shop or the nearest movie hall where your favourite movie is being played. The new Google Assistant will be open to developers to integrate into their apps.

Google Home Expanding the usability of Google Assistant, Google Home is the next chapter for the search giant. It is a small device that works like the Amazon Echo but it is powered by the Google Assistant. The Google Home will be a control centre for your home and your voice will be the remote control. Set alarms, manage to do list, connect smart home, home networking syncing, Nest devices and so on. Further in the future it will be able to control stuff outside your homes - opening garage doors, ordering flowers, etc.

You or any member of your family can ask anything and it will provide you with an answer. It features the Farfield voice recognition technology, so it knows who has asked the query giving personalised results. Queries can range from search results, to opening apps or to remind you about your schedules. Oh and it just doesn’t end there; the functionality of the Google Home goes beyond queries. It is a small Wi-fi speaker that makes use of the Chromecast Audio technology so that you can play your favourite songs via music streaming services, or just push your local music library from your phone. Cast will also support multi room playback and let you control your video content, just tell Google Home and the relevant content will appear on your connected TV.