Google Inc was scheduled yesterday to introduce its much-anticipated entry into the voice-activated home device market, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Named Google Home, the device is a virtual agent that answers simple questions and carries out basic tasks. It was to be announced at Google’s annual developers’ conference in Silicon Valley.
Google Home will come to market in the fall — a long time away, given the speed of technology, but Google needed to plant a stake in the ground now. The device will compete with Amazon.com’s Echo, which was introduced less than two years ago. Amazon has already sold an estimated 3 million units.
A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.
Virtual agents powered by artificial intelligence are one of the major new battlegrounds for consumer technology. Apple Inc’s Siri, released in October 2011, drew widespread attention, but it was the Echo that, after mixed initial reviews, has become a genuine consumer application.
Among the recent features added to Alexa, as the Echo’s software brain is called, are the ability to summon a car from Uber, order pizza from Domino’s and get fitness information from Fitbit and election news from NBC.
“Amazon, Facebook, Apple and others are all heading towards the virtual agent,” Forrester Research analyst Julie Ask said. “Google has seemingly let the competition catch up — level the playing field, even. It’s all the more critical that they do well here, given earlier misses on instant messaging and social media.”
Some elements of the Google product were reported earlier by the technology news sites Recode and The Information.
Virtual agents are a work in progress. Questions are already arising about privacy, disclosures and the quality of the information being doled out. The more information a company has about your habits, interests, purchases and opinions, the better its agent can serve you.
“We’re making everything contextually aware,” Sundar Pichai, then the head of Google’s Android phone software program, said at the 2014 developers’ conference. “We want to know when you’re at home, with your kids.”
Pichai is now chief executive of Google and will deliver this year’s keynote address to developers.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last