Alphabet's Google recently revealed Google Home, its response to Amazon's Echo. Like the Echo, the Home is an always-on speaker which listens for search queries, plays music, and controls connected home automation devices. Home is powered by Google Assistant, which can be useful for users who store lots of data on Google services like Gmail and Calendar. Responses to search queries are optimized for audio, which produces more concise results than text. It also synchronizes with any device using the Cast standard, so it can communicate with Chromecasts to play videos, music, or other content.

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. Will digital assistants make some people totally useless? If you're wrong, you'll have a nice surprise. If you're right, however, everyone will respect your fine judgment. Historian Yuval Harari is a touch pessimistic about the human race.

Today, Google convened 7,000 developers and journalists at a popular outdoor concert venue in Silicon Valley and gave a two-hour state of the union on the future of arguably the most powerful and ambitious company in the world. In front of a packed crowd and tens of thousands watching via live stream, the company brought its best and brightest minds on stage and unveiled to the world that Google is playing catch-up with a slew of products and services we've already seen before from other companies. There's Google Assistant, a conversational AI chat and search bot (Facebook's M/Microsoft's bot projects/Apple's Siri/Viv/literally everyone has a bot these days); Google Home, a voice-powered home entertainment and task hub (Amazon's dreadfully popular and beloved Echo); Allo and Duo, two mobile messaging and mobile video apps (Facebook's Messenger goliath with nearly 1 billion users); and Daydream, Google's Android-powered virtual reality platform, headset, and multimedia content hub (Oculus). But make no mistake, Google, led by its fresh-faced, immaculately tailored blue jacket–wearing CEO, Sundar Pichai, didn't tiptoe around the stage today. Quite the opposite, Google's 2016 I/O keynote address was confident, enthusiastic, and more than just a little impressive.

Lately, there's been a rumble pretty much everywhere about artificial intelligence, digital personal assistants, the Internet of Things, wearables and apps for everything. I've even written about what the rise of digital assistants means to search. There are some who claim that these new technologies will render search obsolete, passed over for the convenience and joy of an always-available digital world. I think they are wrong. Instead of looking at a search engine as an ad platform, we need to remember what it actually does for people.

"We think of the Assistant as a fundamentally different product than search and we think it's going to be used in a different way," John Giannandrea, Google's new search and artificial intelligence chief, said onstage at the I/O developer conference. He didn't delve into specifics, beyond noting that the Assistant is built more around conversations -- tech that talks, nudges and prompts you, not just gives answers. Still, the Google SVP cautioned, dialogue and language are "the big unsolved problems in computer science." One difference could come in the business model. Instead of ads, which support search, Google may dole out its upcoming AI tech to companies and devices that want it.

Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) advertising "profit engine" has been significantly overturned by the smartphone boom, and it has taken quite some time for the company to adapt to the "new world order." The next upcoming wave of computing poses an even greater challenge. At the Google I/O developer conference this week, the Internet search giant announced new technology that will depend "less and less" on screen gadgets to provide information and services to users. A company executive explained that Google aspires for these steps to attract the human attention its revenues rely on, and strategize to make profits later on. Google Home will reside in living rooms, extract voice queries, and provide verbal responses from virtually-designed "Google assistant."

Google this week announced a new messaging app with strong encryption, meaning that your communications can't be wiretapped. But there's a catch: You have to turn on that feature yourself. The tech titan's plan to launch Allo this summer without encryption by default has drawn withering criticism from some quarters. Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption by default in its new #Allo chat app is dangerous, and makes it unsafe. "I, too, would prefer that Allo be encrypted by default," said Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute.

I've quickly grown accustomed to having instantaneous access to the entirety of human knowledge pretty much anywhere and at any time (otherwise known as googling from a smartphone). But you know what feature of the magical unfolding digital future really blows me away? The fact that, in my house, I can say "Alexa, play Led Zeppelin," and start irritating my children within seconds. Alexa is the pleasant personality baked into Amazon's Echo Bluetooth speaker; she's staring at me right now from the kitchen table, breathlessly listening for her name. Google just announced a similar product called Home, and Apple's Siri can pull this off, as well.

Daydream, meanwhile, is the company's true VR ambitions revealed. Cardboard was how it got its feet wet; Daydream is how it'll really make an impact. By leveraging the combined forces of Google's hardware partners, the flexibility and power of Android and the company's army of developers, Google could be looking to mimic the strategy that made Android so successful in the first place. The news that Google is rethinking messaging apps yet again was met with less enthusiasm, but the most important part of the Allo isn't smart replies -- it's the integration with the Google Assistant. That's how Google is referring to the bot that lives inside the app, letting you ask questions with natural language.

Google held its I/O Developer Conference this week, and much of the focus was on machine learning and related technologies. One of the new products the Internet giant showed off was a new custom chip that runs artificial technology, but as always, there was lots to see. UBS analyst Eric Sheridan said one of the most important announcements was Google Assistant, which is a new digital personal assistant that appears to be much more advanced than Google Now. Interactions with Assistant will take on a more human-like nature as it will offer two-way conversational dialogue using the company's natural language processing technologies. Jefferies analysts said the company is far ahead of others in speech recognition and contextual conversation.