It’s always interesting to see a company joining a field, rather than innovating a field.  Sometimes it works; Apple’s iPhone and iPad are good examples of a company entering an existing field and taking it over by making superior products or via better marketing.  Sometimes it doesn’t work; Microsoft Zune, anyone?  Still, there can never be too much competition, and Google has decided that it’s going to lock horns with Amazon directly.  Google has revealed a voice-responsive digital assistant for the home.

The AI, Google Assistant, comes built into Google’s new device, Google Home.  Basically, it works the same was as Amazon’s Echo, but with a little more capacity for suggestions.  Google Assistant is going to be packaged with Google’s new chat app, Allo, and Google’s new video chat app Duo.  Google Home also connects with your television via a dongle, to your smartphone, and to the cloud to play music once you yell out that you’d like to hear some AC/DC or whatever.

No doubt these new features will push the Echo to respond in kind, which benefits everyone.  The more features the better, and the more the merrier when it comes to pushing the limits of what a device can do.

“We think of it as a conversational assistant, having an ongoing two-way dialogue with Google,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai during Google I/O.  “We want to get things done in the real world.  Think of this as building each user his own individual Google.”