Google Home – Answer to a question no one asked

We were lounging around the living room enjoying our social evening when my wife called out, “Hey google, let’s play a game!”

The Google Home device lit up at the request and announced a few game choices. She picked one, chose the number of players and then we listened as the Google Home poorly explained the complicated rules. Once started, Google Home called on player two to answer the question. Though confused by the rules, one of the guests chimed in loudly, “Two!”

Silence.

After several seconds, Google announced that player two should have said, “Two” and that that player was now out of the game. Annoyed, we switched topics and took turns asking Google to define words, play music, and give us the weather. While we often did get the definition, or song, or the temperature, far too many times is would make an empty promise that, though it couldn’t help us yet, it was getting better. Some definitions would stop right in the middle of a word or fail right after it gave us the title of the website. No definition delivered. When a song wasn’t available on Spotify, we would ask it to cast Youtube to the living room. About half the time it sent the video to the TV, but for the other 50% it told us that we needed to subscribe to YouTube Red. Additionally, Google Home still won’t play half of my playlists since it can’t seem to understand the playlist names. They aren’t complicated. One of them is titled “Upwards”. After 20 minutes of various people shouting, “OK Google,” or some variant, the novelty wore off. It was frustrating to use and annoying each time it failed to perform.

The problem with the device is pretty straight forward. Everyone in the room already had Cortana, Siri, or the Google Assistant on their phone. In fact, on many occasions, trying to talk to the Google Home activated the Google Assistant on mobile devices causing people to stop mid-sentence to turn their screen off or utter an expletive about their respective device. Google Home would then try to respond to “What is the weather like in – what the $#^@… it turned my phone on again!”. Google Home doesn’t offer anything we didn’t already have. Google Assistant can control the TV. Siri can play music. Cortana can play games. The Google Home is a product does no more than your phone already does, but lacks a screen or buttons which make it useful. Android Wear, Samsung Gear, and WatchOS can take voice commands to play music through speakers, set timers, and send text messages.

Everyone in the room realized this very quickly. The fun of Google Home wore off so quickly because they had already been here before. We’ve already asked, “What does the fox say” a few dozen times to our other devices, so it was only required asking that once of Google Home before we lost interest.

We put the Google Home in the kitchen. It makes sense since there are occasions where your hands are wet, your cooking, and you can’t grab your phone, but in the best case scenario, we learned that we would rather see the recipe on a screen than have it read out to us. Switching to the preferred song on Spotify was complicated enough that we found ourselves washing and then drying our hands, pulling out our phones and switching manually. My wife also likes to watch shows while cooking. A laptop with Netflix snapped to one side and the recipe on the other side just makes sense. If she needs information, so can just ask Cortana on the laptop or Google on her phone which is sitting nearby. Google Home doesn’t do anything when compared to the laptop or phone, so it just sits idling taking up valuable counter space.

Sound

The speakers aren’t great. If you talk to a friend, you may say, “For such a small device, it sounds pretty good.” The reality is though, they are only a minor step up from a phone’s speaker. As someone who listens to music through a surround sound system, desktop monitors, or a great pair of over the ear headphones, the audio experience was just hollow. When right next to the Google Home, the bass is overblown. Step six feet back, though, and bass turns into muddy mids. If this were my only option to listen to music, I’d rather not listen to music at all.

Why?

I think any good developer needs to ask this question before they make a device. “What hole does it fill?” “What need does is address?” The Google Home doesn’t fill a need. It doesn’t address any issues in my life. It doesn’t make things easier. The functionality, and then some, already exists in my phone. I actually have to learn to speak its language and learn commands that it recognizes. It’s not intuitive. Basic functions are actually impossible or overcomplicated. Adding a song to a Spotify queue is quicker and easier on the phone. It doesn’t require you to interrupt the song and speak a special phrase.

For any assistant to become worth anything, it needs to be able to understand the commands you come up with and it needs to know how you speak.

Verdict: A pencil with an eraser on both ends

I’d love to give the Google Home a rating, but that assumes there’s a standard to rate it against. If I compare to my speaker system, it’s a total failure. If I compare it to my phone, it’s so bad it’s off the charts. I’d like to say, “It tries to do too much,” but the reality is the opposite. It does far too little and does each of what it does rather poorly. Even if I had a smart home with a thousand smart devices, all of them would still be more easily controlled by my phone. If you have the option to buy an eraser or a pencil that has erasers on both end, why on earth would you buy the pencil?

$129 is a lot for a novelty. It’s a lot for a bad speaker. It’s a lot of a device with more handicaps than benefits. It’s a lot for an always listening version of your phone. And to think, they’ve made a $400 dollar version of this!

Since Google didn’t bother making something useful, don’t bother buying one.