Make way for the sequel: Google on Wednesday announced the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, its follow-up devices to last year's well-received but poor selling Pixel smartphones. The search giant -- which jumped into making a range of consumer electronics under the'Made by Google' moniker a year ago -- is hoping for a better result with these successor devices, especially as it takes on Apple and its $1,000 upcoming iPhone X. Indeed, Google CEO Sundar Pichai pumped up Google's mission as being a AI-first, rather than mobile first, company. Pixel 2 starts at $649 for a version with 64GB of storage and climbs to $749 for double the storage. It comes in the kind of colors marketers love to nickname: Just Black, Clearly White and Kinda Blue.

Google is borrowing from Apple Inc.'s playbook as it takes on its rival in the high end of the smartphone market. The second generation of Google's Pixel phones unveiled Wednesday feature larger, brighter screens that take up more of the phone's front, changes that Apple is also making with its iPhone X scheduled to be released next month. Both the Pixel XL and the 5-inch Pixel will also have no headphone jack, something Apple did with the iPhone last year. Google also souped up the already highly rated camera on the Pixel, boasting that it will take even better photos than the iPhone. The smaller Pixel will sell for almost $650, $50 less than the iPhone 8.

Google has unveiled the second generation of its Pixel smartphones, promising all-day battery life, a more responsive assistant, and the best camera yet. The devices, revealed today at a presentation in San Francisco, come in two versions: the 5-inch $649 Pixel 2 and the 6-inch $849 Pixel 2 XL – and, in a move mirroring Apple's recent designs, the new phones do not have a headphone jack. Google's latest Pixel handsets are also equipped with'always-on' display, so you can check your notifications without tapping the power button to wake the screen, and a new'squeezable' feature to activate Google's AI assistant. Google has unveiled the second generation of its Pixel smartphones, promising all-day battery life, a more responsive assistant, and the best camera yet. Pixel 2 will come in three colors: Just Black, Clearly White, and Kinda Blue.

Google has unveiled its first AI headphones with a smart assistant built in. Called PixelBuds, the new headphones will use Google's Assistant software - and can do everything from play music wirelessly to translate languages. The firm revealed the $149 headphones alongside a raft of new hardware including its Pixel 2 phones, two new AI speakers and even an AI camera. Called PixelBuds, the new headphones will use Google's Assistant software - and can do everything from play music wirelessly to translate languages. All of the the audio controls are in a touchpad on the right earbud.

Last time Google made the best Chromebook ever, it was the Chromebook Pixel. The boxy, beautiful $1,000 laptop wasn't designed to go everywhere with you so much as to be so outrageously impressive that it might prompt someone to ask, "Wait, that's a Chromebook?" Google made it to prove a point, not take over the market. This time, Google went a different way. For the Pixel Book, which the company announced today at an event in San Francisco, Google tried instead to build a thoroughly modern laptop, one that you'll hardly even notice in your bag. It has a 12.3-inch screen that rotates a full 360 degrees, so you can use the Pixel Book like either a laptop or a tablet.

Google's single-minded quest right now is to make Google Assistant absolutely unavoidable. From your phone to your living room to your TV to your laptop to your car, the company wants to make sure its virtual helper stays readily available no matter where you are. That, more than a desire for great sound quality or terrific connectivity, explains the new Pixel Buds headphones. At Google's second annual fall hardware gala today, the company announced its first-ever set of headphones. They're wireless earbuds, connected by a rope-like cable that goes behind your head or around your neck.

Earlier this week, a small startup called Init.ai announced that it soon would be discontinuing its service -- a smart assistant for customer representatives to parse and get better insights from their interactions with users, as well as automate some of the interactions -- because the team was (according to a notice on the site) "joining a project that touches the lives of countless people across the world." TechCrunch has now learned what that project is: the team is joining Apple. They are becoming a part of the group working on Siri, Apple's own personal assistant that uses voice-based commands and natural language to answer questions, control your phone and more. To be clear, this is not a straight acquisition, but more of an acqui-hire, so Apple didn't have a comment to offer along the lines of the one it made last week. Specifically, there is no IP coming over and no indication of whether any parts of its existing services will be used by Apple, and no existing customers.

Google has unveiled its new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, with the Android-maker bullish that it can directly challenge the dominance of Apple's iPhone. The firm is using the new high-end smartphones and Android Oreo operating system to demonstrate its prowess in combining hardware and software, using exclusive features to attempt things other manufacturers including Apple cannot. The two phones both have the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 64GB of storage as standard, front-facing speakers, water-resistance to IP67 standards, no headphones jack and new 12-megapixel cameras on the back, but have different sized OLED screens. The Pixel 2 has a traditional 5in screen with large bezels at the top and bottom and costs from £629, while the Pixel 2 XL has a modern design similar to the Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG's G6, with an elongated 6in screen and small bezels, costing from £799. In a direct swipe at Apple, Google's vice president product manager Mario Queiroz said: "We don't save cool features just for the large device. You get all the goodness with both phones, so the only choice you have to make is what size you want."

Sonos made a host of announcements at an event in New York City on Wednesday, including a brand-new speaker--the Sonos One--that will incorporate Amazon's Alexa voice service. And in a pledge to continue being service agnostic, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said the Sonos One will also incorporate the Google Assistant in 2018. Sonos is taking preorders for the $199 speaker now and plans to ship it on October 24. As with previous Sonos speakers, you'll be able to use the Sonos One independently, as a stereo pair, or as surround speakers in a home theater, backing up a Sonos Playbar or Playbase. You'll also be able to use voice commands to control other Sonos speakers, even ones that don't support voice commands natively.

As expected, Google announced the Google Home Mini during its hardware event on Wednesday. It also pulled the Mini's antithesis out of its sleeve: the Google Home Max, a bigger, louder smart home speaker that takes direct aim at Sonos's popular audio gear on the very same day that Sonos revealed a smart speaker of its own. And the speaker leverages Google's AI smarts with a handy new feature dubbed Smart Sound. The Google Home Max wraps dual 2.5-inch high-excursion woofers and custom 0.7-inch tweeters in a polycarbonate housing with acoustically transparent fabric, as you can see in the blowout image below. Google says the hardware can achieve volumes up to 20 times more powerful than the standard Google Home speaker.