The battle for control of the living room just began in earnest. Also, the bedroom, dining room and - it's a safe bet - the bathroom as well.
Google, which knows more things about more people than any other company, organisation or government in history, announced on Wednesday a new household device that will use that information to help people run their lives.
It's called Google Home, and it is not much bigger than a grapefruit. It has no buttons but is activated by voice. It is the most important new venture by the search company, which is repositioning itself as less a tool you go to and more an assistant that is sometimes visible but always present.
"We want users to have an ongoing two-way dialogue with Google," Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, told about 7,000 attendees in an outdoor music amphitheatre here in the Internet company's hometown. "We have started becoming truly conversational."
Google Home got top billing during the two-hour keynote by Pichai and other executives at the company's annual developer conference, but many details - how much it will cost, when it will be available - were not disclosed. The device existed on the stage, but its features still seemed to be works in progress.
Why introduce it now and make such a big thing of it? The reason seemed to lie in Pichai's unusual shout-out to a competitor. "Credit to the team at Amazon for creating a lot of excitement in this space," he said.
In less than two years, Amazon has sold millions of Echo devices for as much as $180.
(The retailer does not disclose sales figures, but it is clear the device is a serious hit.) And each of the voice-activated home virtual assistants that it sells plunges the owner deeper into the company's ecosystem, where he or she orders groceries and watches movies from Amazon.
Those are millions of consumers who are lost, at least to some extent, to Google. The search company had to begin competing with Amazon before that number swelled to tens of millions. Pichai pointedly noted that Google was "at a pivotal moment."
This was Google's 10th annual developers conference, but the first held in the amphitheatre adjacent to its headquarters. The event is designed to be mostly instructive and inspirational for the freelance software engineers who use Google's tools to build things. But it is also promotional, an opportunity taken to broadcast around the world - there were a million people listening in China, Pichai said - what tomorrow will hold.
The mood was rock star, the weather toasty, the future full of machines that would anticipate your every mood and need. Google has at times been the world's most valuable public company - Apple is often No. 1 at others - but it cannot take anything for granted.
Mario Queiroz, the Google executive in charge of Home, said it would "be a beautiful addition to any room in your house." In a short film, a family was shown waking up with Home. The father used it to play music in one child's room and to turn on the lights in another to get them out of bed. The girl, finishing her homework, asked Home what the Spanish word was for "apple." The parents rearranged their schedules. "It will let anyone in the family, kids or adults, have a conversation with Google," Queiroz said. Indeed, in the film, everyone is so busy communicating with Home they hardly talk to each other.
Google already does search solely through voice, but its efforts have been confusingly branded. On Wednesday, Google promoted Google assistant - the company's name for the ability to have a two-way conversation to get information. It will be available this summer in a messaging app called Allo and later in Google Home.
There have been efforts before to develop control centres for the home, but none have made serious inroads. Even the Echo was not an immediate hit with reviewers, some of whom wondered whether it might be little more than a gimmick.
"Before I got an Echo I thought it was a joke and a bad idea," said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. "But I saw the utility and ended up buying five of them for my family."
For Google Home to stand out, he said, it would have to outdo the Echo, particularly in search. "You have to be able to ask it a complex question, and then it would go to the Internet and read it back to you," Munster said. "Echo doesn't do a good job of that today."
Search is, of course, the foundation of Google's success, but Amazon will do what it can to protect its lead. Microsoft, Apple and Facebook are also employing artificial intelligence to enhance their products and services, which is one reason this will be a battle waged on many fronts.
The big tech companies are the new middlemen of commerce and communication. People used to go to stores to buy brands on impulse or by design. Now Google, Amazon and the others mediate the moment.
"A handful of big companies will dominate mobile moments and create distance between brands and their consumers," said Julie A. Ask, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Virtual agents will hold a lot of power."
One example of that power was given by Pichai, when he demonstrated a conversation with Google through his phone about taking his family to the movie "Jungle Book."
"Is 'Jungle Book' any good?" he asked. The reply came: "Looks like it's getting some good reviews."
Who or what is powering the agent's opinions, and how much the consumer can trust it, are among many things still to be worked out.
©2016 The New York Times News Service
