Google confirmed that it will have an Amazon Echo competitor, called Google Home. Announced during the keynote of Google I/O 2016, Home will serve as a hardware avatar of sorts for its new Google Assistant conversational language search tool. Google Home will be available later this year, executives said, for an undisclosed price. The company showed off the small, cylindrical device in white, but it will feature bases in custom colors. Google Home being held by Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management and a member of the Chromecast team.

Amazon has gone to great lengths in the past year or so to expand its Alexa voice assistant beyond the Echo connected speaker. On Tuesday, one of its other devices that taps the cloud-based Alexa--the Fire TV media streamer--got a whole lot better on Tuesday in an announcement that demonstrates how far behind Google's recently announced Google Home device already is. While the new features are not immediately available, Amazon will roll these out via software updates over the next few weeks. Among the key new features are Fire TV app-launching capabilities and the option to ask Alexa to play content from Amazon Video and any add-on subscription content, as well as the capability to find movie showtimes at nearby theaters, read Kindle ebooks, and local business search. The update is the most comprehensive for Alexa on Fire TV to date.

Google had some big announcements to make at its annual developers conference. Here's a quick rundown of what the firm unveiled onstage. Google Home: The company introduced a wireless speaker and smart appliance hub called Google Home, which will be released later this year. The product will be able to stream audio and video like Google's Chromecast devices, as well as control smart appliances. It will also work with smartphones -- you can tell Google Home to change your dinner reservations, and the device will be able to adjust your schedule accordingly.

Those two words are recognized worldwide as a way for any internet user to find an answer to nearly any question. But until now, it's mostly been about typing into a search bar. Now, Google wants you to speak up and chat with your mobile phone and other devices within your home, all powered by its own technology. The Mountain View, California, company revealed two projects, Google Assistant and Google Home, at its annual developer conference, Google I/O, in San Francisco Wednesday. Google Assistant is the company's effort to make search more personalized and efficient for users through machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Google has joined the war to be your digital butler. Speaking to a packed amphitheater of developers here, Alphabet's flagship company on Wednesday unveiled a hot-rodded personal assistant it says will let people control their homes, book movies, search the internet, ask follow up questions about an Italian restaurant, and sort through dog pictures using voice commands. The salvo places Google in the middle of a contest among technology giants to build an artificial intelligence that hold consumers' hands as they navigate the real world. Perhaps with an eye towards modern politics, Google declined to give its personal aide a gendered name. Its main physical form is a small, white, buttonless speaker called Google Home. It looks similar to Amazon's Echo, its own smart speaker powered by Alexa.

Google has announced a conversation-based tool to control smartphones, smartwatches and other devices. Google Assistant can be used to find information, play media and carry out tasks - such as booking cinema tickets - via a back-and-forth chat between the user and the software. The firm also announced a voice-activated device with a built-in speaker called Google Home to provide the tech in living rooms. Amazon launched its own dialogue-based smart home device in 2014, and has since included the Alexa voice assistant that powers it in some of its other products. Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai credited Amazon with having pioneered the idea.

Google would like to remind you that you can talk with it. Today Google is announcing a "Google Assistant" that essentially performs the same tasks as other Google interfaces do, but in a conversational mode. It doesn't have a name, it just has the power of Google and its deep mine of data behind it. In the past few years, we've seen every other big tech company launch a personal assistant: Apple's Siri. Facebook's M. All are already iconic assistants with distinct personalities -- or at least with the distinct sense that they have personalities. That's mainly because each has a name and a personified intelligence that you imagine you relate to.

"OK Google, let's get to know each other a little better." Google said it is ramping up the capabilities of its digital assistant, which has been known as "OK Google" or Google Now. "We truly want to take the next step in being more assistive for our users," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on stage Wednesday at the company's annual I/O developer conference. So far, this digital assistant has worked as a voice-controlled version of Google's core search services, allowing people using Android smartphones or some Google app to ask specific questions, look up directions or check the weather. The company now wants to make its digital assistant capable of more natural two-way conversation, which could make the tool far more valuable for users and help Google create deeper connections to its audience.

Google is turning to artificial intelligence to make sure people keep using its search engine, even if they're not spending as much time on the Web and personal computers. The Alphabet Inc. division unveiled a new mobile messaging application Wednesday called Allo containing a digital personal assistant, based on AI technology that powers other Google services like Inbox. At its I/O developer conference near its Silicon Valley headquarters, the company also showed off a voice-based search device called Google Home that uses the same assistant technology to answer questions when people are in their houses, a potentially potent rival to Amazon.com Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said the goal is to develop an "on-going two-way dialog with Google" and build billions of people their own "individual Google." The CEO sees the Google digital assistant as an "ambient experience that extends across devices."

Google Home, a small speaker you can converse with using natural language, is an ambitious way to weave the company's search engine and artificial intelligence into every fabric of your daily life. The company announced the new product today onstage at its I/O developers conference, and it will be available later this fall. More than anything, Home represents Google's answer to Amazon's competing voice assistant Alexa and the myriad number of devices and services Alexa runs on and connects to. In a video released today, Google laid out how it imagines people will communicate with its software to do everything from play music in the morning and check the weather to changing dinner reservations and sending texts.