USA TODAY takes a look at Google Home, Google's new voice-activated digital speaker, in the hands-on room at an event in San Francisco. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. USA TODAY takes a look at Google Home, Google's new voice-activated digital speaker, in the hands-on room at an event in San Francisco.

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Today marked Google's biggest hardware launch yet. Not only did it announce two Pixel phones and a Daydream VR headset -- it also unveiled a slew of products for the living room. We already heard about Google Home, its voice-powered assistant-and-Bluetooth speaker combo at the company's I/O developer conference this year. New today, though, was a mesh networking router and an updated Chromecast. We took a closer look at all three immediately after the event and came away with a dream of a Google-powered home.

Google is pretty serious about its plan to take over your home. The company on Tuesday offered more details on its smart speaker and home hub, Google Home, as an answer to Amazon's Echo speaker. But Google -- perhaps knowing that it's starting a little bit behind -- has been sure to hook the Home into Google's broader suite of services to make the concept of the smart home more affordable. Home will work with Google's Chromecast video and audio streaming devices -- 69 and 35, respectively -- so that customers can upgrade their current speakers and televisions with little fuss and not that much cash. When the whole system is in place, users can use their voices to call up YouTube videos on their televisions or ask for a specific song to play through their non-Google speakers. Home itself will also be able to play music.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks about the Google Assistant, which will power the company's new line of smartphones and a voice-activated speaker. Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks about the Google Assistant, which will power the company's new line of smartphones and a voice-activated speaker. Google's products are everywhere: maps, Gmail, the Chrome browser, the Chromecast video/audio system, the Android mobile operating system, YouTube, Waze. But the company has been far less successful at selling things rather than software. Earlier this year, Google scrapped the project to build a modular phone; its Nexus phones and tablets are laggards of the industry; and we'll never forget the crash-and-burn of Google Glass.

Google has unveiled its hotly-anticipated new Pixel smartphones, which are branded with the Google logo on the back. The new glass and aluminum phones come with Google Assistant included, a made-by-Google artificially-intelligent assistant that can do things like make dinner reservations through OpenTable. The devices come in two sizes, 5 and 5.5 inches, and are available immediately for pre-order, Google said. "While Pixel's beautiful, what really makes it come to life is how the hardware and software work together," Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of Google's hardware division, said at the San Francisco event, during which they heavily emphasized the importance of the Google Assistant. The Pixel phones will come in three colors, which Google calls "quite black," "very silver" and "really blue."

At its event today in San Francisco, Google introduced two brand new phones - the Pixel and Pixel XL, and Android 7.1 Nougat. Read on to find out more information on Google's Pixel and Pixel XL phones, Google Assistant, Google Home, Daydream View, Google Wi-Fi, Chromecast Ultra and more. Rick Osterloh, head of Google's new hardware division, introduced the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. Rick Osterloh, head of Google's new hardware division, introduced the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. "We're building hardware with the Google Assistant at its core," says Osterloh. " This is a natural step, and we're in it for the long run," he says, saying that we'll hear more about his team over the next few months.

OK Google, it's time to take aim at Alexa. Google has announced that consumers can now preorder its Google Home digital assistant for 129, with a ship date of November 4. First revealed at Google I/O in May, Google Home will compete with Amazon's surprisingly popular Echo product line for voice-activated control of the smart home. The price tag is attractive, and it has some features the Echo doesn't, but Google still has a lot of work to do to catch Amazon. Like the Echo, Google Home can recognize natural language and answer simple questions when it detects a "wake" word ("OK Google" for the Google Home, "Alexa" for the Echo). Google has a leg up on Amazon in this regard, as it arguably has the world's best search engine, and the company has been working on speech recognition for many years longer than Amazon.

Google Assistant, the search giant's new personal digital assistant, is barely available to users, but Google isn't wasting any time opening it up to developers. During the company's hardware event on Tuesday, Google announced two new developer programs to build Google Assistant into pretty much anything you can think of. "Going back to Google's earliest days we've always worked hard to create healthy open platforms," said Scott Huffman, who leads the Google Assistant engineering team. "The Google Assistant will be our next thriving open ecosystem." The first new program is called Actions on Google, which will launch in early December and allow app makers to build Google Assistant into their services.