Amazon Echo and Google Home: Where the real battleground lies

Google Home: a sophisticated cloud-powered artificial intelligence, hidden in a half-burned-down candle. Google has finally unveiled its smart speaker for the connected home, Google Home, which it hopes will take on the current incumbent -- Amazon's Echo. Google Home, like the Echo, is a voice-activated speaker that can also function as a digital assistant, playing music, answering questions, controlling devices or checking your calendar. Looked at another way, both products are gateways to sophisticated cloud-powered artificial intelligence that you just happen to access through something the shape of two stacked cans of beans (Amazon Echo) or a half-burned-down candle (Google Home). Soon, most of the computing around us won't be in'computers' anymore (that's probably already the case for some of us), but in other devices like smartphones, wearables, smart home assistants like these, and built into our homes or offices.