Category: Google Home

The slow but steady global availability of Google Home continues with the Google Assistant powered smart speaker coming to Australia and Germany.  For Aussies, Home as well as Google WiFi will be available on July 20th while Germans will have to wait until next month before Home comes to your country.  The expansion follows it coming to France and Canada earlier this year.

In Australia, Home will be available from the Google Store, JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Officeworks, The Good Guys, Telstra, Optus and Qantas Store.  It will be $199 AUD, about $157US.  Google WiFi will be $199 for a single unit while the 3-pack will be $499.  For those in Germany, Home will be €149.

Chalk this one up in the “about time” category.

There is an update rolling out for Google Home that finally brings the ability for Google Play Music subscribers to stream their library of uploaded and purchased music to the Smart Speaker.  The update is rolling out as a device-side to your Google Home.  There is no update to the Home app itself expected – but keep an eye out.

To this point, when you wanted to play music on Home, it would always stream stations from the service, regardless if you had that music in your Google Play Music library.  The work-around of sorts was to specifically name an album that you have in your library, say “Play the album Clockwork Angels from Rush”.  If the album you requested was in Play Music, it would play it but it was streaming from the service itself, not necessarily what you had in your library.  This becomes a problem if there is an indie artist or other music that you have in your library but it isn’t in Google Play Music.  The work-around above won’t work.  The other work-around was to cast Play Music from your phone to your Home but that somewhat defeats the point, eh?

Good news today for Google Home users in the UK.  The ability to add multiple Google accounts to the Google Assistant powered smart speaker is now available in the country.  In total, you can add up to six account to the device and teach it to recognize each individual users voice.  To add an account, go into Menu>Settings>Shared devices and train Google Assistant to recognize your voice.  You can sen send invites to others to add their account to your Google Home.

When they add their account, they will get personalize results just like you do as the primary user.  So, for example, they will get their Google calendar information and not yours.  All of this supposes that you have the latest Google Home app for Android or iOS installed on your devices.

In October 2016 I received my Google Home from the Google Store.  I quickly unpacked it, got it setup using the Home app on my Nexus 6P and began issuing it random commands as I tried to learn the limits of the device.  And in that process, I found out there were quite a few.  As I put in my review of the device in November,

Can I without any doubt recommend Google Home? No, not yet at least. There is a lot of growing room to happen with this device and Google Assistant within it. Do I think I will change my view in 6 months? Almost certainly. By that time, Google and other developers will have leveraged the platform and APIs available to integrate more apps and more services.

So here we are, six months later almost to the day.  Has it improved?  Undoubtedly and it is continuing to improve.

What I expect to happen has to a large degree, with dozens of new services now available for Google Home along with better smart home integration.  It feels far more complete than it did back in October, partly because of these new services but partly because Google Assistant, built into Home, has gotten smarter too.  It is continually learning both on how I use it but also behind-the-scenes as Google tweaks it.

Can I recommend Google Home now?  Yes, without question and here is why.

While the feature isn’t enabled yet, it appears that Google Home will soon be getting the ability to support multiple accounts.  As a Google Home Pioneer, if there are two feature requests that have been at the top of the list, it has been multiple account support and support for Exchange calendars.  The former, at least, appears to be nearly ready.  This is something that I also pointed out in my review of Google Home back in October as being something which Google needed to address.

If you aren’t familiar with Google Home, right now you can only associate one Google account with the device.  If, for example, you and your partner want to use Home, it will only give you the calendar and other personalized information for the first account setup on the device.  The issues with this are pretty self evident:  I can get my calendar’s next appointment but when my wife asks for her, she gets mine.  Even if you add a second account to the Home app, it will only give you the personalized information for the first account.

Google is making it easier for you to fill your home with, erm, Google Home.  Right now at the Google Store you can pick up two of the smart speakers with Google Assistant built in for $229.  That’s a savings of $29 if you bought them separately.  Having multiple Home devices is something that has been supported since its release and allows you to get access to Assistant in which ever room it happens to be in with you.  There are also commands built into Home that allow you to play music across multiple Home devices too.

Google Home certainly doesn’t have the number of commands that its primary competitor, the Amazon Echo, has today.  But that gap is closing and closing fast.  Google nearly every week is announcing new services, bots and commands that can be used with the device.