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There are still no figures available yet that reveal smart home assistant adoption and usage, but the competition continues to heat up between Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
The former just got its stable beefed up with an announcement Jan. 24 that Honeywell and Belkin WeMo have already joined its ranks.
“With Honeywell and your Google Assistant on Google Home, you can conveniently manage your home’s temperature without leaving the comfort of your covers,” Google said in a blog post. “And when you’re headed out the door, Belkin Wemo and your Google Assistant can help you remember if you turned off the lights.”
Connecting To Google Home
If you own Google Home and recently bought Honeywell and Belkin WeMo, they can easily be connected to the smart speaker. Just head to the Settings section and add the devices in the Home Control panel.
Along with the Honeywell and Belkin WeMo support, Google also shined on the service called IFTTT. This is a platform that will allow Google Home users to tweak Google Assistant commands. For example, instead of saying “Ok Google, turn off my lights,” you can use a custom command like “Ok Google, goodnight.”
Overall, Google seems bent on providing an alternative experience and additional options to lodge a credible challenge to Amazon’s Alexa and its thousands of skills.
On Google Home Partners
The addition of Honeywell and Belkin WeMo seems to be just the beginning. Google indicated that more partners are coming and these will ensure that the platform will be covering a wide-ranging area of your home.
At present, Google Home partners also include Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, and Google’s own Play Music. Smart home products like Philips Hue, Nest, and Samsung SmartThings, among others are already on-board. There are also reports that Sony speakers and Android TVs that support Chromecast can be connected to the home assistant.
The number, however, still pales in comparison to those supporting Amazon Echo. To provide a simple context, Alexa has been controlling Samsung SmartThings, Honeywell, and Belkin WeMo for some time.
One should note, however, that Google is still playing catch up. Amazon Echo has a two-year leg-up so it is understandable how it can manage to boast of around six platforms at this point to Amazon’s more than a dozen of partnerships.
According to CNET, Google Home’s list of partners could increase soon as indicated by the way it is expanding Weave. This is the technology or language, if you will, used by smart home appliances to communicate with each other. In a December announcement, Google has listed several companies producing Internet of Things devices that use Weave.
The list includes Lifx, Wink, TP-Link, and First Alert.
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