Tag: Google Assistant

Actions for Google Assistant continue to be added at a pretty fast clip and most of them we don’t hear much about.  They just show up in the Assistant app on your phone and then you can use them there or on your Google Home.  However, every once in a while, Google highlights a new Action like that have with Tasty.

Tasty.co is a fantastic recipe site that gives you step-by-step instructions and videos to cook just about anything.  Now it is even easier by simply asking your Google Home to talk to Tasty.

A few weeks ago Spanish support for Google Assistant was added in what at the time looked like a precursor to Google Home being available in the country.  Today that has proven to be the case.  Now on the Spanish Google Store site, you can order a Google Home for €149 (roughly $172) and a Google Home Mini for €59 (roughly $68).

While Spain was expected due to the the Assistant support, the fact that Austria and Ireland also now has Home available came as a bit of a surprise.  Google had not previously announced these two countries, but given the rate of expansion that the Mountain View company has aimed for in 2018 both with Assistant and Home, it isn’t too big of a surprise.

Google Assistant has a nice update rolling out to it that allows for you to give it three commands at once when interacting on your Google Home.  The change falls in line with some of the announcements at Google I/O last month, including requiring less verbiage to make things happen.

A few weeks back, the ability to give Google Assistant two commands rolled out but it still required a lot of words to make happen.  For example, you could say, “Hey Google, turn on my office lamp and turn on the kitchen lights” and it would do so.  Now, however, you can cut that phrasing down to “Hey Google, turn on my office lamp and the kitchen lights”.

A small, quiet update has rolled out to Google Assistant that allows you to set your default language in three Spanish dialects.  The update, which is a cloud-side update, allows for users to set España, México, and EE.UU as their default language.

The addition of these different dialects almost assuredly means that expansion of Google Home into Mexico and Spain is just around the corner as that has been Google’s pattern in previous Google Home and Google Assistant expansions this year.

Over the weekend, I posted about the great deal the Google Store is running on the Google Pixelbook.  Now it seems they have put together a great deal on the Google Pixel 2 XL phone too.  Right now at the store you can pick up the flagship Pixel device for regular price but you get $150 in store credit to use later plus a Google Home Mini.  All you have to do is add both the Google Pixel 2 XL and the Home Mini to your cart and the price will be discounted.

While we all know that the Google Pixel 3 lineup is going to be coming later this year, that is no reason not to give the Pixel 2 XL a serious look.  It will be updated to Android R when it is released and you still get free Google Photo storage for two years too.  Oh, and it is a seriously awesome phone.

In what could prove to be the clearest sign yet that the personal assistant race is coming down to two horses, Microsoft appears to be set to allow both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant on the Xbox One.  The news, along with a supporting screenshot, came from the team over at Windows Central and points to users having the option to leverage the personal assistant of their choice on their Xbox One for controlling the device from their phone.

The news of this falls in line with other news that Microsoft is fundamentally shifting Cortana, their digital assistant, away from the consumer market and more toward the productivity side of things and not necessarily a personal assistant.  It appears that Microsoft is conceding to Alexa and Google Assistant.