It’s easy to praise Amazon Alexa when we don’t know much about Google Home. Over the years, both have been in a major competition, but the Google product thrived above its competitor, the Alexa. Let’s take some time first to get acquainted with these products, and then we will proceed to outline the nine things that Google Home can do that Amazon Alexa can’t.
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About Google Home
Created in 2016, Google Home has received major updates to the voice assistant speaker. In this way, it keeps closing the gap between it and its competitor, Amazon Alexa.
This app from Google is the means by which you can set up and control Google Nest or Home speakers, display, and Chromecast. It is so effective that anyone can use it to control thousands of compatible lights and cameras, seakers, and do more, like checking reminders, recent notifications; and all these could be done from a single app – The Google Home.
Google keeps rolling out support for other device manufacturers voice shopping, and rolls out support for a wide range of smart home devices.
You can download Google Home For Android and iOS devices.
About Amazon’s Alexa
Amazon proudly introduced Alexa as a cloud-based voice service that’s available on more than 100 million devices from Amazon and from third-party device manufacturers. Would you like to build a natural voice experience to offer customers a more intuitive way to react to technology? Alexa can do just that. However, in this article, we will highlight 9 things that Google Home can do that Amazon’s Alexa can’t.
1. Find and play songs with contextual awareness
Have you ever tried to play a song that you don’t remember who sang it, and you don’t even remember the title? That is not an issue in Google Home. You can find songs and play them based on context.
So let’s say you want to play a song from context; you could say the following: Ok, Google, play that Usher song from ‘Let it Burn.’ The song ‘Burn’ begins to play because that’s a phrase from the song ‘Burn’ inside the album ‘Confessions.’
What matters most is that you have some lines from the song you need to play, and Google will do the rest. If the song is available, it will play it.
2. Google Play Music, YouTube Music & Spotify
While Google Home prioritizes Google Play Music and YouTube Music, Alexa also prioritizes Prime Music. Both apps play songs from other sources, such as various streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. It is possible to stream any audio in Alexa speakers if it is paired with a smartphone or a tablet.
But Google Home is better because it streams music from YouTube Music. To do that, the user must have a YouTube Premium account.
3. Act as audio receiver for Chromecast
The advantage of this is that you may need to listen to a song in another format that makes it sound better. For Chromecast, Google Home acts as the audio receiver. To enable this, you need to do two things:
- From a supported app, tap Cast Logo
- Select Google Home. This can be done from any TV or speaker with Chromecast installed.
4. Transmit audio and video to TV with the use of Chromecast
It is also possible to use Google Home speaker to act as a controller for other Chromecast devices in this setting. All you need do is say the words: “Ok Google, play ‘Essence’ on the Chromecast.” This is possible on YouTube videos, Netflix movies, TV, and pictures from Google Photos. This is perhaps the biggest upper hand that Google Home has over Amazon’s Alexa.
5. Group commands into one sentence
Google Home speaker makes it possible to group two commands into one sentence. A good example is as follows: “Ok Google, play Flogging Molly and sent the volume to 10.” In some cases, it may not work as you expect, but if you play with wordings in the sentence, things could work like magic. The word “and” in the middle of the sentence successfully joins two commands and makes them one. Note that Alexa is unable to handle two commands at once. But it has routines that are a string of what is expected from a user. Take note that routines may run on a schedule, but they can’t be used on just any command.
6. Change the voice
In case you don’t like the Google Home default voice, you can change it. You have a choice of selecting a male or female voice. In Alexa, you’re limited to just a female voice. Though you can change a dialect in Alexa, you can only use a female voice.
7. The Night Mode
Night Mode is a feature found in Google Home that enables the app to wake people up in the morning. It gives the app a reduced sound, and the indicator light on the speaker will also be dimmed. The Night Mode can be set up in a way that it won’t work on some days. Most people like to use it on weekends when they’ll be off from work. Here’s a checklist of what Night Mode features you need when setting it up:
- Select the days when it will be activated.
- Select the time it will notify you and when it will stop.
- Select the brightness of indicator lights from the speaker.
- Select the volume
8. Hold Natural contextual conversations
For Alexa, you can be answering questions most of the time. Let’s say you’re trying to order things from Amazon using Alexa. It may ask you a series of questions to understand you better and get what you’re looking to order. One is typically just reduced to answering questions asked by Alexa.
Google Assistant can do more. Instead of just asking and answering questions, Google may delve into other related topics to enlighten the user. This technology is made possible by Google Now’s contextual awareness. Google Home is ready to converse with you like a real person in a way that Alexa can’t.
9. Command shortcut
Google Home has command shortcuts that act as a text expander to the user’s voice. It doesn’t work exactly like Alexa’s routines, but it is used to more. For example, it is possible to create a command shortcut like: “Ok Google, play my favorite song.” Google Home may understand it to mean: “Ok Google, play ‘Essence’ on Spotify.”
Verdict
We think that your Google Home is more splendid than Amazon’s Alexa, but that doesn’t mean there’s little to love about Alexa. With all the additions in features and upgrades, many people out there will still spend their last dime using Alexa.
