Hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in again. It's time to get started with
another Google Home new features, new updates, and of course everything new for
the Google Assistant as well. So let's get started. All right, first things first.
We've seen the launch of a number of Google Home Smart Displays or Google
Smart Displays on the market. We've seen one come out from JBL, and we've also
seen one come out from Lenovo. Now both of those devices are getting good
reviews, but ultimately Google still has not released their own device. So that
has been rumored to be launched before the Christmas season, and I would expect
it to come out here as well. Obviously Google wants to hit that market before
the Christmas season. Next up is something else we're likely to see by
the time Christmas rolls around. Sonos has been hinting at Google
Assistant integration into the Sonos One and Sonos Beam, both of those speakers
for a long time, and ultimately what they've said is it's time to go. It's
going to be right around the Christmas season as well. So that's going to make
both the new Google Smart Display branded by Google and the Sonos speakers
pretty hot items around Christmas. This is a big feature as far as I'm concerned.
We've all seen the revamp of Google News but what we haven't seen is integration
with Google Home and the Google Assistant. What happened this week is
in the US you are able to ask your Google Assistant on an Android phone
to go ahead and give you the latest news about a specific topic. That means
the functionality is coming very quickly to all the other devices and a number of
countries. We don't have a roll out schedule but here it comes. The next
thing is something I've been asked about by a number of users on the channel.
There's obviously a lot of different music services that you can use with
your Google Home and Google Assistant, but Pandora has never been a service
that's been available. So Google has gone and they've partnered now with Pandora,
and the premium service is available on Google Home, Google Home Mini, Google Home
Max, and of course most Google Assistant devices. The big thing I noticed with
this integration was actually the fact that you could search by lyric using
your Google Home. So that's a really interesting functionality and not something
I've used with other services, but is available with Pandora. Last week I told
you all about the Russians, the fact that they were coming to the Google Assistant.
Well this week it's the Swedish that are coming, and so Google Assistant can now
speak Swedish. This is in line with what Google has said in the past months
here, that they will be adding all of these languages to the Google Assistant.
and eventually the Google Home. This is a bit hearsay right now, but what I'll say
is some pretty good detective work went into this next thing, and what has been
found throughout some of the most recent Google Assistant code is what appears to
be a face match service. This makes sense as well if you think about the
Smart Displays coming out here. They are basically creating a new set of
functionality that you could go ahead and use with your Google Home device. Now
what they're saying in this is this code is called Avocado right now. It's a
little bit cryptic, but ultimately it seems to require the use of your camera
on your tablet or phone, and then on top of that there also seems to be some
facial recognition code within the program. If you were living under a
rock this week, you probably didn't hear about Alexa and Cortana being integrated
at some level. It's a it's a pretty basic level right now, but ultimately that
integration is intended to deepen and get better. Now what we've seen is one
device here, a thermostat called GLAS from Johnson Controls, it now has
actually three assistants, or three voice assistant
capabilities within it. So the Google Assistant integration has been added,
Alexa has been added. The interesting thing about this device is Cortana will
still remain front and center. You can ask for Alexa. The Google Assistant
integration is through your Google Home, but ultimately you can still control
this device. Now while this next piece is not actually Google Home news
or updates or new features, what this is is something that I think a lot of
people on the channel are going to be interested in, and that is basically i
hearing aid capability being added into Android through a partnership between
Google and a company called GN Hearing, basically a Danish company actually. Now
those two companies are pairing to get hearing aid support and connectivity
embedded into Android directly, and therefore what i think you're going to
see, especially when we talk about these Smart Displays, is direct connectivity
through those devices. It remains to be seen if that would extend to something
like the Google Home or the Google Home Mini ultimately, though I think it's
headed in that direction. So I wanted to share that here as soon as I heard about
this different type of integration. There you go everyone. We're all done this week
with all the new latest Google Home and Google Assistant updates. We're still
waiting on Google Duplex and a number of those features that came out from Google
I/O 2018. We're not hearing any updates, I've actually asked Google a number of times,
but nothing new is being shared at this time. We do know in in terms of Google
Duplex, we do know that Google is out there demoing this and getting tests
done with different focus groups. So we do know that's coming soon, it's just how
soon. So stick with us here on the channel. We're going to be running these
every so often here. I try and run them every week, but ultimately sometimes
there's just not enough news related to the Google Home and
Google Assistant. So thanks for watching everyone. We'll see you next time.