Google Home Is 6 Times More Likely to Answer Your Question Than Amazon Alexa

http://www.adweek.com/digital/google-home-is-6-times-more-likely-to-answer-your-question-than-amazon-alexa/

by kbyatnal • 9 years ago

106 48 9 years ago

tyingq2• 9 years ago

Interesting, but no info on the set of 3000 questions. For example, maybe Alexa is better at the top 100 most asked questions, but Google Home is better at the long tail.

Odd that there wouldn't be more insight either there, or at the 360i site.

giveitachance• 9 years ago

But if one can't trust a digital marketing agency to backup a catchy headline then who can one trust?

pishpash• 9 years ago

Well that's not surprising. Google basically ported over Google Now, a mature product; and Google has data. Amazon had some shopping data, and that was it.

suyash• 9 years ago

Exactly I'm willing to bet 5 years from now, Google Home or whatever version of this will leave Amazon Alexa in dust.

phinnaeus• 9 years ago

Assuming, of course, that Google doesn't abandon the project for some reason. Or heaven forbid, try to implement messaging.

aioprisan• 9 years ago

Without seeing the 3000 questions and what categories they fall in, I wouldn't put too much stock into this article. I use both on a daily basis and Alexa is far more accurate than Google Home, but again that's my use case, mostly asking for radio stations, songs, news trivia questions and simple arithmetic.

jumpkickhit• 9 years ago

I really don't like having to voice a query, I'd much rather type it out.

If Elon Musk sold a neuralink brain wi-fi device I'd be first in line for it. These voice activated search devices though, pass.

drcross• 9 years ago

Maybe so but for a lot of people they want information but dont want to stare at a screen to get it.

pound2• 9 years ago

Anything beyond few words direct answers is much better to see on screens.

ionised• 9 years ago

Then they are not going to get a very substantial response.

wubbfindel• 9 years ago

Why the downvotes on this? I appreciate the thoughts. I think it's a real shame that Google's assistant isn't available in a desktop client, that can use either text or voice input.

mbrookes• 9 years ago

Here you go: https://developers.google.com/actions/tools/web-simulator Okay, not strictly a desktop client, but the same end result.

Similar is available for Alexa.

DrScump• 9 years ago

It might be just a visceral, reflexive reaction to reading "neuralink brain wi-fi device" and then thinking to oneself, "am I really ready to join the Borg collective?"

euyyn5• 9 years ago

I mean, it's not a desktop client, but from Android you can use either text or voice for input to Google / the Assistant. I bet from iOS too.

eddigo• 9 years ago

I've been working with speech systems on and off since 1998. They're all pretty bad in my opinion. They're not even almost there yet.

I remember studies from years back that speech is far lower throughput than typing for nearly every language except Chinese.

I hate talking, especially to a computer, when I have a typing interface. Speech is such a serial, synchronous information channel. That fact paired with how context-limited speech systems are makes for a very poor experience. It's really going to take an inventive design to get people to use speech regularly for machine interaction. We're just not there yet.

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

Back when Apple was looking over Blekko this was something we tried to point out to them (and the Siri team). You can't dialog what you don't know. Indexing the web really helps with that because not only can you pick up a lot of documents you can get a sense of which ones humans think are more important than others. To this day I don't know why Apple doesn't have a search engine team and crawler.

tyingq2• 9 years ago

Apple just doesn't seem to want anything where the primary interaction isn't with their hardware device. Maybe just sticking to the model they know.

melling2• 9 years ago

Siri is pretty painful at times. Weird how the speech recognition can go so wonky.

I’d buy an Alexa or Google Home if I knew one of these two companies was pushing to take these tools to the next level.

dunkelheit• 9 years ago

Apple has a crawler! https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683

Another question is why it is so low-key. I guess the answer lies in some obscure big-org power dynamics inside Apple.

melling2• 9 years ago

I think you need actual humans using it as a search engine to make it better. Typos, common questions, follow up questions, etc.

amclennon• 9 years ago

As an owner of four Echo / Echo Dots in my house, I can say that Alexa is terrible at answering questions outside of a few common areas (weather, store times, etc).

With that said, I think the true power of Alexa's ecosystem is it's smart device integration. I'm sure Google will catch up soon enough, but at the moment I feel like Alexa still has a sizable lead.

hbosch• 9 years ago

In reference to the OP topic, I'm curious... How often do you use your echo as a Q&A device? Or is it just for media and assistant like functions (alarms, shopping, etc)?

garblegarble3• 9 years ago

at the moment I feel like Alexa still has a sizable lead.

Do you really? I have 4 Echo & Echo Dots too and I love them, but the level of smart home integration is incredibly basic... "turn on the X (light)", "set the X (light) to 50%", "set the heat to 20" and "trigger find my phone".

(edit: this post sounds pretty negative, it's mostly frustration because the speech recognition is actually really good, so when it fails it's really noticeable & the shallowness of comprehension of what I'm actually saying to it is so shocking when the speech recognition tech is that good)

It will fairly often mishear light names (like my bedroom light, it confuses my name with "Theatre"), the integration will fail to contact a light (and instead of retrying the echo just says "I couldn't contact light X". It doesn't understand the room it's in (so I'm constantly having to name lights, rather than just tell it to turn on the light, or dim it).

I feel like the level of integration needed from people like Hue and Nest is so simple that even the most basic integration into a competitor (with just as good / better mic+voice tech) could blow Alexa away overnight... it actually feels like something you could build in a few hours with access to the Alexa processing repo.

...which really kills me, because as you say Alexa is better than anything out there, but it feels like all they're doing is adding funny responses to pre-canned phrases rather than trying to seriously improve their smart home proposition or trying to tackle the context/discoverability problem

supergeek1333• 9 years ago

It will fairly often mishear light names (like my bedroom light, it confuses my name with "Theatre"), the integration will fail to contact a light (and instead of retrying the echo just says "I couldn't contact light X". It doesn't understand the room it's in (so I'm constantly having to name lights, rather than just tell it to turn on the light, or dim it).

We tell our customers to put their alexa devices into groups in the alexa app. It tends to help your situation quite a bit. For instance for our Lyric thermostats the default name assigned is "Lyric". So you can imagine the things that happen when telling your Alexa to "Make Lyric Warmer". Haha.

That being said, the challenge for them is "Making a light a light, and making a thermostat a thermostat" and knowing every time when someone says "turn on X" they're talking about that thing.

I've noticed my Google Home does a better job at being 'fuzzy' in that regard.

supergeek1333• 9 years ago

Speaking from experience, the integration model for Smart Home into Google Home was a really time consuming experience up until recently. Now it compares to Alexa from a level of effort perspective.

So they'll catch up pretty quick.

pound2• 9 years ago

Maybe I'm an outlier, but turned out I don't care at all for asking home assistant various questions. I have GH and my usage is mostly limited to "turn on/off lights" and "set timer". It's just that moments like "we need to ask what movie someone also starred at" are not really a part of any conversations we have at home, and if we really need to look some info up we will do it looking at screens.

Google Home being ridiculously bad at how it works doesn't help either - it feels like it's getting worse every week. I hate it how it understands me from fifth attempt now, I'm tired of hearing "I cannot help with that" 3/4 of the time for the same command or just listening for a minute and then do nothing. And it's not a matter of dusted mics. And not even starting on all that nonsense as declaring company name many times a day as a wake word, still absent reminders and frigging fiasco with shopping lists. Yet another "let's start with first iteration of product and then move to something else leaving it half-baked, because ADHD and we can"

(edited typo)

IgorPartola• 9 years ago

Exactly the same with my Echos.

The problem with asking these things questions when you are in a group of people is that now the whole conversation pauses to hear the damn answer. And then there is the 5-10 second processing time and the very slow non-interactive answer. It's just so much more efficient to have one of the people in the conversation whip out their phone and use Google, then say the answer when it's ready. Especially if the answer is not "Who was the start of The Martian" but something like "How closely was Lincoln the movie based on historical events?"

I will say, I also use my main Echo to play music. It is really nice that way, though song, artist, and playlist name recognition is atrocious. "Play Top Hits" and "Play Today's Top Hits" produces completely different result. Don't you know what I mean Amazon? Don't you know what I mean?

My kids (turning 4 soon) have figured out how to use it too, which is kinda neat.

Terretta• 9 years ago

Own all of them, any time one fails, try the others for comparison. Over time, I find Alexa “most improved” and Google most frequently laughably terrible. (Siri most integrated, but most useless outside her zone.)

IOW, Google Home might answer most questions but is also most likely to just cross its fingers and pray the upcoming nonsense is useful.

Try asking straightforward questions like “Who was the oldest President?” or “Who won last year’s basketball finals?” to see these patterns.

Also ask Alexa why she’s better than Google. ;-)

RodericDay• 9 years ago

Why did you buy four if they're not very good?

dpflan• 9 years ago

useless comment: For fun, have an Alexa relay its questions to Google Home...Fact Checking...

sna1l2• 9 years ago

I asked Google Home: "Is it cold outside?" and it responded: "Sorry, I can't answer that yet." Seriously!?

This is the same for all of these home devices, but I have to talk to it in such a robotic manner, and if I deviate at all it won't do what I want. It definitely has some niceties, but a long way to go to being essential in my life.

euyyn5• 9 years ago

That's weird; the Assistant on the Pixel responds to that with "No, it's not cold in Mountain View right now. The temperature right now is 29." (and shows a weather forecast card).

haberman• 9 years ago

I can confirm both of these results: Google Home said "Sorry, I don't know how to help with that" and Google Assistant on my iPhone answered "No, it's not cold in Seattle right now. The temperature right now is 66."

twothamendment• 9 years ago

Yes, Alexa is bad at answering random things we throw at it, but making an app to control what I want to and how is why I love it. I don't trust Google to be as open.

J_cortes• 9 years ago

Did everyone forget GoogleTV? Amazon has a strong presence in the retail market and my amazon kindle dx is still supported. I'm not wasting my time with google again.

navytank• 9 years ago

One critical difference: GoogleTV was a platform where distribution (updates, etc.) were owned by the TV manufacturer. Google owns the update channel on Google Home.

It's like comparing the Pixel now to early carrier-operated Android phones.

tatfat• 9 years ago

This headline reminds me of 80s and 90s when folks touted why <pickYourOS> was better than windows. Ultimately, the ecosystem and network effects matter more.

matthewfelgate• 9 years ago

No it's not because I don't have a Google Home.

Google Home Is 6 Times More Likely to Answer Your Question Than Amazon Alexa

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