The Home launched at Google I/O almost a year ago, but has been only available to US customers since November. However, in the time between launches, the company has localised the smart speaker, integrating a number of services and sources tailored specifically for Britons. The BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Sun, The Telegraph, Huffington Post, Sky News and Sky Sports are available from launch, with more being added over time. The launch of the Home in the UK sees Google go up against one of its biggest rivals: Amazon. The Echo and Echo Dot has largely had the smart speaker market to itself until now, but the Home -- with its intelligent Assistant -- builds on top of Google's existing search and AI expertise.

Google is launching its rival to Amazon's Echo, the Google Home, in the UK as the battle for the living room hots up. The smart speaker, which can play music, control Internet of Things devices, and answer questions, will cost British customers £129, some £20 more than Amazon's Echo, when it launches in Britain on 6 April. Google first launched the Home in the US in November, alongside the introduction of the Pixel phone and Google Assistant AI. Google Assistant is a voice-controlled digital assistant that runs on phones, Google Home and even smart TVs, and can provide context-aware assistance, knowing what sort of environment it's in. Since the initial launch, Google Assistant has gradually come to more Android phones, as well as Android Wear-based smartwatches.

There is no doubt the search industry has evolved. Just one look at how search engine results pages are currently laid out shows how things have changed. We have come a long way from 10 blue links. But have we gone far enough? At SXSW earlier this month, information access was a hot topic.

The relationship between humans and robots is a tricky thing. If the latter looks too much like the former, but is still clearly a machine, people think it's creepy, even repulsive--a feeling that's become known as the "uncanny valley." Or, as is sometimes the case, the human, with "Star Wars" or "The Jetsons" as his or her reference points, is disappointed by all the things the robot can't yet do. Then, there is the matter of job insecurity--the fear of one day being replaced by a tireless, unflappable, unfailingly consistent device. Human-robot interactions can be even more complicated for one group in particular--older adults.

There is no doubt the search industry has evolved. Just one look at how search engine results pages are currently laid out shows how things have changed. We have come a long way from 10 blue links. But have we gone far enough? At SXSW earlier this month, information access was a hot topic.

It was just a friendly little argument about the fate of humanity. Demis Hassabis, a leading creator of advanced artificial intelligence, was chatting with Elon Musk, a leading doomsayer, about the perils of artificial intelligence. They are two of the most consequential and intriguing men in Silicon Valley who don't live there. Hassabis, a co-founder of the mysterious London laboratory DeepMind, had come to Musk's SpaceX rocket factory, outside Los Angeles, a few years ago. They were in the canteen, talking, as a massive rocket part traversed overhead.

In the next decade, it is predicted that humans' relationship with artificial intelligence will have evolved from a limited influence to a steadfast dependency. Imagine a world where virtual personal assistants (VPAs), such as Siri, Echo and Google Assistant are as ubiquitous as electricity and as dependable as a best friend (Florence 2015). These AIs (artificial intelligence) will be driving cars, caring for elderly citizens, teaching students and may even deliver medical diagnoses (Stephenson 2016). These assistants will be so thoroughly enmeshed in people's everyday decision-making, that they may very well be making decisions themselves! But how will this all happen?

Grindr is coming of age. Over the weekend, the app founded by Joel Simkhai celebrated its 8th birthday. Almost a decade and more than 10 million app users worldwide later, the company is eager to get rid of its "gay hookup app" image, and establish itself as a lifestyle brand instead. Following a much buzzed-about partnership with designer J.W. Anderson in 2016, plus a Paris fashion week party earlier this year, the company will launch its online magazine titled Into, today. The media platform required a full year of preparations and is headed by former Wonderland magazine Production Director, Oly Innes.

People sometimes think of artificial intelligence (AI) as the natural language processing they saw in HAL 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey or the chess-playing computer Deep Blue that beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. Others see AI as the synthetic human intelligence engineered into a friendly voice interface and software, like Apple's Siri. By contrast, in the enterprise environment, AI for customer marketing offers a far more practical, personal, immediate and business-oriented application. Effective customer marketing is about analyzing billions of signals and automating analytics on a bottom-up basis. It results in highly personal marketing, pairing the right product and offer at the right time to a defined group of people.

There was a point in time where brands were the aspiration, but in our new world, brands have become entirely subservient to people. The explosion in data availability and advances in AI are changing the relationship brands have with their customers. In the past, deregulation and access to marketing tools gave way for the proliferation of commoditised services. A hyper-competitive world, where choice is abundant was born. Surviving meant optimising quality for lower the cost.