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Google Home to Be Launched at I/O 2016, Take on Amazon Echo: Report

Google Home to Be Launched at I/O 2016, Take on Amazon Echo: Report

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 18 May 2016 14:30 IST

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Highlights

The tech giant is expected to unveil Amazon Echo competitor at Google I/O.
Google Home will answer questions and perform basic tasks.
Google is also expected to release Android N at the three-day event.

Google I/O is about to begin in a few hours and there's a lot that we are expecting to be unveiled at the three-day annual developer conference in Mountain View, California. One of the things is Google Home, an Amazon Echo competitor that the search giant is expected to unveil during the event on Wednesday.

This falls in line with previous rumours that indicated Google was working on an Amazon Echo-like speaker. However, Google is now said to be calling it Home, and not Chirp as was rumoured previously. Google Home will mark the search giant's entry into the voice-activated home device market. So far, Amazon enjoyed negligible competition in this segment. Indiegogo-backed Cubic was introduced last year, but doesn't have the outreach Amazon does. Google's Home, however, might change these dynamics to a large extent.

The New York Times reports that Google Home will essentially be a hybrid speaker integrated with voice recognition which will answer your questions and perform basic tasks. It's been nearly two years since Amazon Echo hit the market, and the e-commerce giant has managed to sell almost three million units since then. Amazon Echo's voice assistant Alexa can do a host of things from Google Search, set and inform reminders, describe traffic, summon cabs, manage home electronics, and even order food.

Google Home's specific capabilities are not known yet, but the report says that the tech giant will unveil Home at its developers' conference in Silicon Valley on Wednesday. However, Google will not make it available in the market till fall.

We expect Google to make a lot of announcements at I/O this year. Apart from Home, the search giant is expected to unveil the next Nexus smartphones, and the final version of Android N. The team behind Project Ara will shed more light on the development of the modular smartphone, and demos of Google's latest edition of self-driving cars are also expected to be seen. Furthermore, a new revamped Cardboard might be unveiled, alongside a full-blown standalone Android VR headset.

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Further reading: Amazon Echo, Cubic, Google, Google Home, Google I/O 2016, Home