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Google Gets Serious About Home Automation: Unveils Google Home, Actions on Google and Google Wifi (techcrunch.com)
At its hardware launch event earlier today, Google launched Google Home, a voice-activated speaker that aims to give Amazon's Echo a run for its money. The speaker is always-listening and uses Google's Assistant to deliver sports scores, weather information, commute times, and much more. Tech Crunch reports: So like the Echo, Google Home combines a wireless speaker with a set of microphones that listen for your voice commands. There is a mute button on the Home and four LEDs on top of the device so you can know when it's listening to you; otherwise, you won't find any other physical buttons on it. As for music, Google Home will feature built-in support for Google Play Music, Spotify, Pandora and others. You can set up a default music service, too, so you don't always have to tell Google that you want to play a song "on Spotify." Google also noted that Home's music search is powered by Google, so it can understand relatively complex queries. Music on Google Home will also support podcast listening and because it's a Cast device, you can stream music to it from any other Cast-enabled device. Home integrates with Google's Chromecasts and Cast-enabled TVs. For now, that mostly means watching YouTube videos, but Google says it will also support Netflix, too. Google Home will cost $129 (with a free six-month trial of YouTube Red) and go on sale on Google's online store today. It will ship on November 4. What's more is that developers will be able to integrate their third-party apps with Google Assistant via "Actions on Google." With Actions on Google, developers will be able to create two kinds of actions: Direct and Conversation. Direct is made for relatively simple requests like home automation, while Conversation is made for a back and forth interaction utilizing API.ai. Actions on Google will also allow third-party hardware to take advantage of Google Assistant. Those interested can sign-up for the service today. But Google didn't stop there. The company went on to reveal all-new, multi-point Wifi routers called Google Wifi. The Verge reports: The Wifi router can be purchased two ways: as a single unit or in a multipack, just like Eero. A single unit is $129, while the three-pack will cost $299. Google says Wifi will be available for preorder in the U.S. in November and will ship to customers in December. There was no mention of international availability. Google says it has developed a number of technologies to make the Wifi system work, including intelligent routing of traffic from your phone or device to the nearest Wifi unit in your home. It supports AC 1200 wireless speeds, as well as simultaneous dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. It also has beamforming technology and support for Bluetooth Smart. Google says the system will handle channel management and other traffic routing automatically.
always on and network connected microphones that sends what they capture to "the cloud" (and who knows who else) for analysis.. just what the world needed more of.
is a fucking moron. Yahoos emails were are routed through NSA's filters, so it's more than likely that this data would too at some point in time.
Is "only if you invite them into your house" exclusively a vampire thing? Because I think it applies here.
The very last things I would ever want in my house are either Google or Microsoft "internet of shit security" (IOSS) devices. Not only would they be as insecure as all the other crap that's been put out there so far they'd be 100% guaranteed to be spying on every single thing you do.
The way things are going you won't even be able to take a shit without Google & Microsoft knowing about it.
Fuck all this nonsense. I'm going back to pen and paper for notes and the dumbest phone I can find for the limited amount of time I'm prepared to actually talk to people on the phone (if I didn;t need one for work I'd not bother with one at all).
You can stick this fucking "techno" Panopticon right up your fucking arses !!!
Not really convinced this is a "serious" platform for home automation - turning on Hue lights or playing music via voice command is hipster cool, but where is the deep support for real physical infrastructure:
- X10 and Zwave lighting
- Thermostats of all varieties, including the dumb kind
- Infrared, with support for both regular home theatre gear AND wall mounted air conditioners.
- Curtain / blind controllers and aircon zone controllers
- Relay contact outputs
- Energy monitoring and trending
Then, what about all of the rules that make Home Automation automated?
... until you realize it's Google and they're going to steal all your personal information off the wire and send it to home base. sigh.
I know everybody says it is easy to set up with Android or iOS, but I miss the old days when a router was able to be set up with the web browser and you have full control over its features.
Not sure how any of this counts as "home automation" either.
This is why I don't put devices like the Nest products in my house - it's bad enough to have my smoke detectors track you and likely report back your position to Google, I can't imagine why anyone would want every household conversation sent to Google as well. The upside is Google lets you know they are watching you all the time, where it is unknown with gov't organizations
What % of slashdot posters actually trust google? Even the mildly paranoid ones rather than the full tinfoil nutters?
Even if you don't mind them having some information on you, if you like a service they offer, they'll /probably/ shut it down within 12 to 36 months, or they'll re-brand the product, adjust it heavily, integrate it with something else or redesign it so horrifically it's a shadow of its former self.
I regret to admit I use 4 google products pretty heavily, being Android, Gmail, Youtube and Chrome (in that order of use too) I could probably ditch Chrome if bloody firefox would up their game on performance, but sadly, if anything Firefox is getting slower and losing marketshare to Chrome.
Seriously, they have significant information on people over the years and they continue to gather and link more and more. Furthermore they are pretty incompetent at some things (look at the messaging systems for Android, they still STILL haven't come close to just plain old cloning imessage) they've just released a 3'rd chat application which is just a mess.
Would you really want MORE google stuff in the house? Routers, Wifi equipment, Chromecasts?
Thank god they aren't as amazing and competent as they used to be, back in the day we 'gave up' our stuff, willingly because god damn they simply had the best stuff, now, I'm not even sure it's worth doing for their diluted products.
In conclusion? Yeah, not a chance.
if Google was serious about home automation, they would not have bricked the Revolv smart home hub. There is now way that I will spend another cent on any Google home automation products.
What % of slashdot posters actually trust Microsoft? Even the mildly paranoid ones rather than the full tinfoil nutters?
Fixed that for you.
M$ has root, brah.
No tinfoil nutters needed.
if you like a service they offer, they'll /probably/ shut it down within 12 to 36 months, or they'll re-brand the product, adjust it heavily, integrate it with something else or redesign it so horrifically it's a shadow of its former self.
I think we saw that in action today. I guess Google Now has been rebranded, adjusted, integrated, and redesigned into Google Assistant?
Google is the NSA and everyone ignored me.
I agree, using google for the pc is about where I draw the line for searching, and even then the searches are pure tripe these days spewed with page 'ad' ranking rather than real relevant data sets I am interested in (Read as run your own spider instead ;)). Having access to which door has just been opened, and potentially by whom, is just too much information to divulge. Privacy starts at the front door. Google and co are not welcome in my home. In-fact, tonight I will place a physical robots.txt on my welcome mat blocking any unwanted guests to my home.
Let me know when home automation can take out the trash or clean the litter boxes. Until then...
Would hook up aspects of your house management..heating, cooling, locks, etc. to the internet.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
... that is likely to drop the full product lines in few years in another product rationalization.
A bit later than 1984, but we finally got there.
Who'd have thought it? Not content with letting pretty much anyone (including criminals) read their mail, track their movements with CCTV, spoofed phones and car license plate readers etc, the citizenry are actually buying them and installing this crap themselves!
That's right, apparently it's just too hard to stream music or adjust a thermostat by hand; you now have to install a device that is always on, always listening in order to whistle up a recipe or get the sports. They must be mad.
How could anyone be dumb enough to install this kind of direct surveillance device in their home or office? No... No.. No... I don't even want to be in the same room with this thing.
I get to pay a fortune so I bug my home, send any conversation I have to Google, and in return I get some gimmicks, which will work for as long as Google deems that service useful (and as we know, they have a really stellar record of long term support of their projects).
What I didn't read in the whole article is what kind of pressurizing medium they have on me that I would allow this to happen, but I guess at the very least they would be able to kill my firstborn if I don't.
In other words: Who in their sane mind would WANT something like this???
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... marketing an IoT product after killing Nest. What guarantee do I have that the servers running this thing won't be shut down too, bricking my device?
Chromecast is pretty rad.
Eat the rich.
instead of firefox try palemoon, it's a well-maintained fork from back before the ff team went pants on head retarded
Launching it from my SSD on Mint 18 the window takes a while to pop up, and even then the interface stays frozen a good 5-10 seconds before I can interact. Core i3 4170, 4GB RAM (normally only 500MB used and the rest is free)
I see a lot of the posts in this thread are people railing against Googles new surveillance device. Yet the majority of them probably have an Android phone sitting in their pocket. How is this any different? What makes this fundamentally worse?
Either you support this kind of device implicitly by carrying an Android (or iOS) phone or you don't support it by not carrying a phone at all. You can't have it both ways.
"Google Gets Serious About Surveillance."
Soon - much to the delight of Dr. Farnsworth - their products will be so invasive as to be offered as a suppository.
I think we saw that in action today. I guess Google Now has been rebranded, adjusted, integrated, and redesigned into Google Assistant?
I believe they announced Assistant back in May at I/O 2016. It seems like a rebrand with additional functionality tacked on.
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I know everybody says it is easy to set up with Android or iOS, but I miss the old days when a router was able to be set up with the web browser and you have full control over its features.
You can buy One of these, or use the Google models which are just plain ole' routers with the phones/Google OS laptops handling the traffic interruption / handoff themselves, like, you know, they already do. ;)
I'm always surprised that articles like this don't cause a discussion about Revolv.