It is turning into a monumental battle between tech giants. The race to create a smart home assistant has already seen a plethora of virtual assistants, from Apple's Siri to Amazon's Alexa and Facebook's chatbots. Now, Google has joined the fray with Home, a $130 smart speaker that can do everything from play music to control your lights - and has the vast knowledge of Google's search engine as its'brain'. We pitted it against Amazon's Echo Dot and Apple's Siri in a series of tests to reveal the personality (or lack of) in each of them. We pitted Google, Home,Amazon's Echo Dot and Apple's Siri against each other in a series of tests, from singing to telling jokes. Google's Home is the firm's latest AI move, after introducing its smart assistant in the new Pixel handsets last month.

Amazon and Google's virtual, voice-only assistants both allow you to carry out simple tasks. Asking questions like "who is Barack Obama?" or "how many cups are in a quart?" will offer up variations of the same answer. You can ask it to provide all sorts of information – the results of mathematic equations, the weather, or the latest headlines informed by your personal news settings. Every question you've asked can be revisited in the Google Home or Amazon Alexa app, even allowing you to play audio of your query so you can hear how the device hears you. These responses are stored in the cloud, which, depending on how paranoid you are, is unnerving.

Google just launched Google Home, a voice-activated speaker, powered by the tech giant's virtual Google Assistant that's also featured in their new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. The speaker aims to bring the power of Google's numerous services--like offering weather updates and converting measurements, among other tasks--into a stylish and easy-to-use package. At a quick glance, Google Home is a direct rival to the popular, Alexa-powered Amazon Echo speaker. Google has priced the newcomer attractively at $130, revealing that it has serious intentions about this rapidly growing product category. Google Home features a high-quality speaker with three audio drivers, sophisticated far-field microphones, and intuitive touch controls.

Google has a winner with Google Home, for those who want a hands-free assistant that can answer a broad range of questions that come up during day-to-day activities in the house. It easily beats what Amazon Echo can do. Google Home -- which ships to consumers this week -- is Google's answer to the Amazon Echo, which came out two years ago. Both are hands-free, voice-activated devices designed to be placed in a home and able to play music, provide news, control devices and generally serve as an all-around assistant. Part of that assistance is answering questions people might have. Here, Google Home outshines Amazon Echo because its built-in "Google Assistant" is smarter than the Echo's "Alexa" assistant.

If you need to hail an Uber, Amazon's wildly popular virtual assistant Alexa is your go-to connection. But if you're looking for an artificially intelligent conversation partner, Google Home seems like the better fit. Reviews are in for the Home device which Google releases Friday. The product is Google's answer to Amazon Echo, a cylindrical microphone that runs Alexa. The consensus: This new thing from Google is very smart.

Reviewing a product designed to learn over time is like reviewing a newborn baby. So much functionality is dependent on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the only certainty is that it'll get smarter over time. Who knows what it'll end up being: A jack-of-all-trades? Or maybe just a creeper that records everything you say? At birth, it didn't have the ability to order you Domino's, play Spotify playlists, or get things from Amazon Prime.

Last week, Martin Abadi, a computer scientist and member of the Google Brain Team at Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL), along with David Andersen, an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, published a research paper that describes how artificial intelligence entities "can learn how to perform forms of encryption and decryption, and also how to apply these operations selectively in order to meet confidentiality goals." In simpler terms, GOOGL created three separate AI entities and instructed two of them to pass secret messages back and forth while the third attempted to intercept and decode them. When the encryption was broken, subsequent messages were secured with even more advanced methods. The truly amazing part of the experiment was that "the networks were not taught anything about encryption before the game began, meaning that the strategies they came up with were entirely original." That also means Alphabet researchers may never know exactly what kind of encryption methods were being used, and they probably won't be able to crack it, either. The GOOGL Brain Team isn't the only AI research team competing to develop the next revolutionary advancement in machine learning and automation.

USA TODAY'S Ed Baig compares Google Home to the Amazon Echo. It was the question on everyone's minds Wednesday night – particularly if you weren't parked in front of a TV. Who won the World Series? Reviews are pouring in for Google Home, the search giant's answer to the Amazon Echo smart speaker which goes on sale Friday. While there is a lot to like in the $129 device, many critics, including USA TODAY's own Ed Baig, noted that there's still plenty of room for improvement.

I'd be lying if I said unplugging my Amazon Echo didn't feel a bit like a breakup. "Alexa," I whispered while pulling the plug, "it's just for now." But it wasn't Alexa, it was me. More specifically, it was someone else. I needed the space for Google Home.

USA TODAY'S Ed Baig compares Google Home to the Amazon Echo. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. USA TODAY'S Ed Baig compares Google Home to the Amazon Echo.