Hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in again. It's time to get started with
another Google Home and Google Assistant new features, new updates, and of course
new products. Everything that is the latest with the Google Home and Google
Assistants. So let's get going. The first thing to talk about this week is
actually the fact that this little device right here, the Google Home Mini,
was the top-selling speaker actually in quarter 2 of 2018.
So this captured 20% of the smart home market, whereas the Amazon Echo Dot
captured 18 percent. Now overall what I'll tell you is Amazon is still ahead
because their Amazon Echo outperformed the larger Google Home device here, and
the Google Home Max of course, but ultimately we can see that lead eroding
from Amazon. Something that you've likely expected was the case already was that
Google Assistant was available on Android Auto. Well that hasn't been the
case and it is now going to be the case as Google rolls out updates to Android
Auto in a number of countries. Now of course with this there's not going to be
a keyboard, so you're not able to type in commands, Google obviously doesn't want
to promote you typing into an interface in a car. Now the countries that will be
getting Android Auto pushed out to them are Australia, France, Germany, the UK, and the
United States. So kind of all the the normal countries that we're used to
getting these kinds of features first, but there you go. One of the things that
we're seeing is called digital wellbeing and we know that both Apple and Google
have been focusing on that, and they've been trying to add that as an extra
feature to their phones, to their operating systems, and ultimately to the
Google Home in this case, and the Google's Assistant settings now on top
of that what we're seeing is digital wellbeing starting to show up in the
settings applications in the next apk or the next download of both the Google app
and the Google Assistant app. Something that was brought to my attention by
actually one of our followers here, Justin Harvey, is his
name. I'll leave his Twitter profile down below, you can follow him, he kind of
follows all the technology space just like I do, and he pointed out that Roku,
all of the TVs and the streaming boxes, will be able to utilize the Google
Assistant. So there's integration coming here right away through your Roku to
search for TV show,s movies, etc., and go ahead and get those playing on your
device. So that integration is right away here coming for Roku. On top of all of
this we've seen Google consistently adding new languages to their list of
supported languages basically for the Google Assistant and the Google
Home. Now this week and actually last week we started seeing Danish and
Norwegian rollout for the Google Assistant. So it's not quite on the
Google Home just yet, but you can use it with Google Assistant. You're going to be
able to get both of those languages. One thing that we've been hearing a lot
about is the material theme design, and we've been seeing little snippets of it
here and ther,e but with devices like the Lenovo Smart Display, JBL has one of
course, and you know we're basically on pins and needles about the Pixel 3 here,
but ultimately with those devices coming out, Google Assistant is now getting the
material theme design pushed out to it all over the world, and what we're seeing
is those cards of information showing up when we're asking questions that Google
wants to provide a visual response for us. Something that's been an interesting
trend, and I didn't quite understand this functionality until I started reading
about it here, recently the Sony Xperia XZ3 is another phone that will have the
Google Assistant on board. You'll be able to basically bring it up with the use of
the power button actually I think you double tap it if I remember correctly,
but it's getting some specialized commands for that device through the
Google Assistant. So it's not just your standard set of instructions that you
have access to, you actually get a few custom
commands with that. Things like manipulating the camera, how it's taking
pictures. SimpliSafe is a home security system with a $25 a month or $24.99 USD a
month service fee that you can go ahead and get professional monitoring for. So
it's kind of a do-it-yourself system with SimpliSafe's hub. Now SimpliSafe
has gone ahead and they've created integration with Google Home and Google
Assistant, so you can go ahead and you can actually arm your system, ask the
status of your system, and get other statuses from the SimpliSafe security
system. Now you do have to have that $25 a month professional monitoring service.
Something that I don't think has been out there quite as far-reaching as say a
device like Circle by Disney is Google's Family Link. Now what this is is this is
capability for you as a parent to limit screen time. Now there are some
requirements for what devices you have, and what device your child has. They must
have an Android device of 7.0 or better, and if they don't you can't limit their
time, but you can as the parent have an iOS device of a certain level. I think
it's iOS 9, but I'll leave a link down below. You can go ahead and read all
about Family Link by Google. It's now integrated with the Google Assistant. One
last thing to talk about, Disney has added three
basically text-based games to the Google Assistant. We haven't talked about kids
for a little while her,e we haven't really seen the push from Google on the
kids side as hard, but Disney has come along with three games. They are Maui's
music game, the Disney Princess, and Toy Story freeze dance. Now those games are
obviously available through your Google Assistant and your Google Home right now.