For the past few years, Google and Amazon have tussled to get the most attention for their respective digital assistants at CES. But while Amazon mainly focuses on partner announcements, Google aims for consumer attention with new Google Assistant features (plus a gigantic, ostentatious building outside the convention center).
This year is no different, and today Google has announced all of the capabilities it’s adding to the Assistant. It’s a grab bag of things — ranging from making privacy options more accessible to improved device setup to making voice calls easier to place — and what will matter to you will depend entirely on what kind of stuff you do with your smart speaker or Android phone. And as usual with Google, most of these features are not going to be available right away, but instead later in the year.
For me, the headline feature is scheduling actions. Instead of going through the hassle of setting up a full routine, you will be able to ask the Assistant to do something for you at some point in the future as a one-off. So, for example, you could say “turn on the lights at 2PM tomorrow.”
But the most important features are the slightly improved privacy options. If you haven’t checked Google’s web-based privacy dashboard lately, you can ask it “are you saving my audio data” and it’ll tell you what’s up and send a link to your privacy settings to your phone. Given how difficult it is to find anything inside Google’s settings on the Assistant and Home apps, it’s probably the easiest way to do that now.
If you suspect Google accidentally activated the speaker to listen to you, you can say “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you,” and it will delete the last utterance from your history.
Google is trying to make it easier to set up new smart home devices, too — something Amazon has also been doing with Alexa for some time. Google’s new feature will have the Assistant pop up a notification once you’re done with setup in the manufacturer’s app for a new gadget. Tap it, and it’ll connect it with your Google Assistant and ensure it’s working properly.
Google also says it’s adding support for a bunch of new smart device categories into the Google Home app, including AC units, coffee makers, vacuums, and smart bathtubs. There are supposedly 20 new kinds of devices, and I will be going to see if I can take a bath at the Google CES Compound later today.
If you have a Google smart speaker, you can set up “Speed dials,” which are exactly what they sound like. It’s useful because it’s always a crapshoot what will happen when you ask the Assistant to call somebody by their first name — or if somebody else in your house does the same. Chances are you know more than one John, so if your kid wants to call uncle John, the speaker would ask which John. So: small problem solved. Speed dials will also have a visual interface on smart displays.
Lastly, Google will let you save virtual sticky notes on smart displays for family members. They should work whether or not the person making them has registered their voice as a user.
Like I said, it’s a grab bag. All of these seem like nice features, but they also are a reminder that every digital assistant and smart speaker shares a common problem that we haven’t figured out yet: how to remember what it can and can’t do. Some of these new features — like the smart home setup — handle their discoverability on their own by popping up a notification. But for most of the rest, these companies will have to either market the feature or convince you to read a software update notice.
For Google, at least here at CES, there’s no shortage of marketing. Whether that will eventually turn into consumer awareness is another question.
Comments
Google is going down a terrible road with how they release new features.
By MA2756AM on 01.07.20 1:05pm
Agreed. Are we supposed to keep trying these features for an undefined period until they suddenly work?
By JamesRabino on 01.07.20 1:32pm
No, I think we’re just supposed to forget, in case Google doesn’t get around to releasing them.
I would love if the Home app notified me whenever new features are added to Assistant.
By Scatterthought on 01.07.20 10:03pm
Yes!! Finally!!
By mattcoz on 01.07.20 1:13pm
Ah yes, finally. "Hey Google turn off the lights at 11:10pm", that’ll come in handy
By ArchieDaBear on 01.07.20 1:28pm
I mean, if people are worried about home security when they’re on holiday, turning lights on and off through their trip might come in handy. If they’ve got wifi-enabled plugs they can set these little automations in case they forget to do it on the fly. Got an old school coffee machine or heater that you want to be popped on before you get up every morning but it doesn’t have a timer? This might come in handy. Even your example of ‘Hey Google, turn off the lights at 11.10" might work in a small office environment with employees who aren’t power-conscious.
Just because it’s not applicable to you, doesn’t make it obsolete.
By shaihalud on 01.07.20 3:41pm
Any of the stuff you listed would be better served by setting up a routine, which the assistant already has. I feel like this would be better for one off commands, but I’m struggling to think how I’d be able to utilize this feature.
By Knappsterbot on 01.07.20 4:39pm
I guess my point was that there are instance where things may help people. Ultimately, you’d want much of this stuff to be done at the appliance level, but that’s not always possible.
By shaihalud on 01.07.20 5:17pm
Sleep timers would be a decent use case – "Hey Google, stop the music in an hour" for example. With smart lights, you could potentially use them to remind you of something – "Hey Google, flash the lights in 20 minutes".
It would be more useful if you could get contextual scheduling, rather than time-based scheduling. E.g. location based: "Play music on kitchen speaker when I get home"
By death_au on 01.07.20 6:39pm
Sleep timers have been on assistant for a while, the only place you cannot use them is your phone and watch.
They work exactly like you imagined.
By Oracleofthemountain on 01.08.20 5:37am
Wanna bet that it won’t be available to Gsuite users? I can’t even ask my damn assistant to remind me to things "when I get home" like I used to.
Bit by bit, Google is removing features from GSuite. I get it – it is designed for corporate users, but don’t they understand that there are 1000’s of consumers who gladly pay monthly for the service yet still want these new features as well?
By scoobydooby on 01.07.20 1:37pm
if there are really only "thousands of consumers" I can see why it’s not a priority.
By Burgerman on 01.07.20 2:09pm
Drives me insane, too. I signed up for "Gmail for Hosted Domains" back when it was first available more than a decade ago. Since then, I’ve paid them at least $8/mo every month so that I can be cut off from features, and continually lose features that I had before. It’s infuriating, but all of my mail, apps, movies, music, etc are tied to that account, so I have to keep paying them to be shit on.
They should just have a toggle "treat this like a regular Gmail account", where they turn off all the business features, and just let me use my account.
By Joe Dombrowski on 01.07.20 3:05pm
my google home devices not being able to access my gsuite calendar is what finally pushed me to switch to alexa.
By Dirty_Dogg on 01.07.20 6:09pm
I’m in the beta for Assistant access to G Suite calendars.
It doesn’t work very well. But it’s better than nothing at all. Unfortunately the bit I really want – the schedule readout for a Routine – doesn’t work at all. I’d say "yet", but I don’t trust them to ever include it.
By mathw on 01.08.20 5:20am
Removing reminder support is something I’m still angry about. It understands my request perfectly, it used to work perfectly (well, provided only my phone heard it anyway – if a Home heard it I’d only find out about the reminder if I was somewhere near it at the time it triggered, which was utter nonsense in itself), but they turned it off because… something.
NOT. ACCEPTABLE.
It is fun to pay more to have less. But, my email isn’t full of adverts.
By mathw on 01.08.20 5:22am
Let me guess…. "We will be rolling this out to random users in the coming weeks"
NM "Later this year" even worse…
By quick_ on 01.07.20 5:41pm
FYI you can do this already.
By fragilities on 01.07.20 7:56pm
If you can schedule actions into routines that’d be amazing. I then think I can finally get off IFTT entirely. Google has been slowly removing my need for it with new features. My most used IFTT one is my morning command that turns on my lights and tv and plays something for 15 minutes then turns it all off so I don’t have to worry about it when I’m leaving.
By XanXic on 01.08.20 9:24am