Quizzing Google Assistant vs Alexa
In terms of being all-knowing, Google Assistant is much better at looking up facts and finding information. Google is in the selling knowledge business. Amazon is in the selling stuff business. That shouldn’t necessarily bias one to choosing a Home over an Echo, Britannica was more accurate than Wikipedia but it didn’t cause them to win out, but it is interesting at demonstrating the years of additional learning that went into developing Google Assistant.
At breakfast today, my family and I wanted to know when JK Rowling’s Harry Potter became a breakout and how old she was at the time. Alexa couldn’t get past the first question where Google Assistant got four questions deep, even being able to talk about her first marriage.
A know-it-all doesn’t necessarily do-it-all. The experience of music on Google Home is far behind the Echo. There are more ways of connecting with the Echo and I don’t feel the system is as closed. Maybe there’s another term beyond AI and emotional intelligence that needs to be used to address this gap as a metric? Usability? Openness? Smoothness? Whatever the term, Echo is still ahead.
