The Internet of Things is becoming a reality and every company is trying to jump on the bandwagon to provide you with more accessibility in your home. While smartphones are certainly the center of all technology within our lives and the controlling access center, the idea of having a personal assistant in your home is very helpful. It is nice to be able to ask questions about the weather or how to cook certain meats while your hands are tied up. That is why Google just announced Google Home, a new competitor in the personal home assistant arena.

Is it too late to the game?

Many people expected Google to release their own assistant at some point, but the question is whether or not they are too late. A lot of people have already settled on a personal assistant program, and Amazon’s Echo has been one of the more popular ones that has found a lot of success. However, Google is already integrated into most people’s lives. Everything from their daily calendar to their emails to their advertisements are already being run by Google. It just makes sense that Google would be the right company to take all that information, store it for you, and answer all your questions in your home as well. Being able to sit back and ask Google to read your text message instead of having to get up and find your phone while in the middle of doing something else is very valuable. Google Home is especially nice because Google’s search function has proven to work better than anything else, so when you ask questions, Google Home is going to have to best answers for you. For a lot of people who have already integrated much of their life with Google, the Google Home just makes sense.

It works just like an Android phone with Google search capabilities. You simply say “ok google” while in the room with it, and then ask your question. You can ask about the weather, information in your calendar, directions somewhere, or even just who won the big game last night.

The biggest problem

According to the Verge, Google Home does not have the ability to recognize more than one voice or more than one Gmail account. Since the starting price is only $129, which is fairly inexpensive for many people, this may not matter because they can just buy multiples for their home. For a lot of people, though, they want to be able to get one smart assistant that can connect to all users in the home. It means when you ask Google Home about your calendar events, it can’t tell you everyone in the family’s day but just yours. The Amazon Echo is only able to connect to one Amazon account, but it has the ability to listen to multiple voices in the household, which is a bonus and puts it ahead of Google Home in this area. Many people want to be able to access information from multiple Google accounts and want the ability to have more than one voice recognized by the device.

Google did mention it was planning to add multiple accounts later, but the chance for there being problems is probably too big for Google to be willing to risk right now on a new product and a new kind of technology.