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The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

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Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#401

Post by jacksmith21006 »

fermienrico wrote: post #7

Google is miles ahead in terms of a conversational assistant. There is a lot of friction in using voice activated services. If I have a choice of typing "Weather in XXXXX zip" in the address bar vs. asking an assistant, I choose the former. Therefore, every time I use anything else but Google, I am afraid it won't recognize my command and I immediately feel like throwing that thing out of the window. I need to be 100…

Agree. Had an echo since late 2014 when it came out and now several Google homes. The echo requires rigid language or basically commands you have to memorize to use.

The Google home supports natural language for most things.

I think of the Echo like a command line interface and the Google home like a GUI.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#402

Post by jacksmith21006 »

dionian wrote: post #340
icc97 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that Google shouldn't be in the name at all.

"ok google" is a dealbreaker to me, but not because of google. who starts a sentence with "ok"? "hey siri" makes a bit more sense since at least you are interacting with it in a normal way. it's still weird but less robotic than 'ok google', and it's also much better than 'hey apple' for that matter

That is why I say "hey google" instead as easier to say. Our Echo gets a lot of false positives where the Google home does not. Google made the right choice in terms of usability.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#403

Post by jacksmith21006 »

ehsankia wrote: post #346
xyzzyz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personalization would require training the network to recognize your hot word, which needs to work in all sound environments, and detect hot word spoken by different people. That network also needs to be optimized to be small enough to be run constantly by a low-powered CPU in standby mode. I am not saying that it is not doable, it's just there are real engineering tradeoffs present here.

Yep, most people don't realize that: 1. Hotword detection runs on a minimal low powered local subsystem 2. The two provided hotwords run networks that have been trained on millions of samples in thousands of different environments. That thing is very heavily optimized. Alexa and Bixbi get far more false positives and false negatives.

This. The Google home gets far less false positives and why the wake word makes far more sense. You also do not then get accidently recorded like with the Echo.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#404

Post by dragonwriter »

dilap wrote: post #68
melling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Hey Google” is the same number of syllables as Alexa.

The number of syllables isn't the problem, it's that prefixing every request with "OK," feels extremely unnatural -- almost like you're treating the Google assistant in a sardonic or sarcastic manner. (Also, "OK" is a very unnatural prefix! Notice how you accidentally replaced it with "hey". I watched a 7 year repeatedly do this a couple of days ago with Google Home, concluding it was broken. Compare w/ Alexa, which…

> try always addressing your friends by putting "hey" in front of their name and see how it goes

My friends are better at contextually disregarding comments and don't send any utterance that seems to invoke them to a remote server, so don't need a form of address designed to avoid false positives.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#405

Post by jacksmith21006 »

m0ngr31 wrote: post #31

Google might be ahead in some conversational things, but functionality wise, Alexa is way better. Probably has something to do with being on the market first, but developing a skill is a much better experience than it is with Google (imo). I think that's a big reason why. I've developed a number of skills for some big companies, and I'm fighting Amazon right now about getting my open source one published ( https://gi…

Could not disagree more. We have and echo since it came out late 2014 and now several Google homes. The Google home is just a lot more funtional. The obvious answering questions and has mapping built in but it is also foundational. The GH supports natural language for most things where the Echo requires rigid language or basically commands you have to memorize to use.

My wife clicks a photo on her iphone and without touching an additional button walks into our family room later and will ask for fine details in photos and the TV turns itself in, input sets and the photo in 4k appears.

We also have a 4k Chromecast and this is just not possible with the Echo.

But the cool part setting it up was just buy, plug in and log in and that is it. Wife already used Google photos on her iPhone.

We started with the Echo but now have switched to Google Homes and unless going to do a lot of shopping on Amazon can not see any reason to get an Echo over the Google home any longer.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#406

Post by dragonwriter »

dilap wrote: post #73
jmgao wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, 'Hey Google' as a hotword was supported on the Google Home from the beginning.

Interesting, someone else said that too. It definitely wasn't working for us though... Maybe something to do w/ whether or not it was trained to our voices?

In principle, training to your voice should only be necessary to get access to personal content and settings, but it probably also improves wakeword recognition (and the training trains with both wakewords.)

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#407

Post by jacksmith21006 »

figgis wrote: post #39
lgas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why Goole before Amazon?

Personally I resent the fact that Amazon has done everything in their power as a company to make it so I cannot stream amazon prime to my chromecast. That alone has tarnished my opinion of the company.

My bigger complaint is Amazon banning anyone in their marketplace from selling the Chromecast or the Google home.

But now that Amazon purchased Twitch they removed the Twitch app from the Roku. Use to be a fan of Amazon but this is ridiculous behavior in their part.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#408

Post by dragonwriter »

andygates wrote: post #381
dionidium wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the argument is that it should necessarily be "Google" instead of "OK, Google." It could be anything, but whatever it is, "OK, Google" is a really clunky, robotic, and unnatural sounding phrase. Worse, it thinks it's human and conversational, but it's not, so it actually has a sort of auditory uncanny valley feeling. It's not good. I'm not saying they should use "Google." I don't care what they use, as…

The Assistant now supports "Hey Google" as an option, and it's surprising how much better -feeling it is. It's less clunky, and it seems to motivate more conversational queries.

> The Assistant now supports "Hey Google" as an option

“Now” as in “since the introduction of Google Home”. (On phones prior to Google Home, it only supported “OK Google”.)

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#409

Post by jacksmith21006 »

corobo wrote: post #363
ehsankia wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's far more conversational. It understands vague questions far better, and the speech understanding also works far better for people with deep accents. 2. It has great integration with other Google services if you're already a heavy Google user (maps, mail, calendar, Fi/GV, hopefully Keep soon...) 3. It has fantastic uses with chromecast (netflix, youtube, pause, rewind, volume, etc). Obviously, #2 and #3 will v…

I think the question was more "why invite Google into your home before Amazon" - as in the companies, not the devices

For me I am agrevated with Amazon behavior and the Google home is just a lot better than the Echo.

Amazon removing the twitch app from the Roku after purrchasing Twitch is just wrong. Also Amazon banning any company from able to sell the Google home or Chromecast in their marketplace is also a problem.

Amazon does not need to do this anti competitive BS.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#410

Post by jacksmith21006 »

pythonboi wrote: post #212
gh02t wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find ghome to be better for smart home use. The app is a little more intuitive with organization and it is a lot better with recognizing the names of your stuff. Alexa would have trouble recognizing arbitrary names while ghome almost always gets it right. I started with Echo but ended up replacing it with Google Home because I like it so much more.

Thankfully I am not the only one who thinks this! I had an argument with my brother over IoT devices with Echos vs Google Home products. Google Home still requires you to use 3rd party apps but you are forced to set up the device in a location in your home/apartment. I can walk into my apartment and say "Ok Google, turn on all lights" and not have to worry about which brand of lights turn on. When I used my Echo Dot…

This is the big difference. The GH supports natural language for most things and the Echo requires more rigid or basically commands you have to memorize to use.

I think of our Echo as a command line and our Google homes as using a GUI.

BTW, GH is also a lot easier for old people has been my experience.

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