The Google Assistant is more than just the virtual aid that lives inside the Google Home family of smart speakers. It's a search engine, a companion, a home controller, and an automated reminder system all rolled into one. It's not just available through a smart speaker either--you can get the Google Assistant on your smartphone, inside the Allo chat app, or through another device, like this refrigerator from LG. Isn't the future neat? If you've got Google Assistant on the brain, however, chances are you're also thinking about how to take advantage of it through the Google Home. The smart speaker hasn't been around for long; it reached the market since late 2016, when it was initially launched with half of its current functionality in time to compete with Amazon's Echo speaker sales that holiday season. Now, however, the Google Home's feature set has grown and expanded to include a long list of compatible products and services.

More and more people are using the phrase "Ok Google" to start a conversation to find information or perform actions using the Google Assistant. Launched last fall, the new assistant is already available on over 100 million devices and is rapidly evolving. Today at Google I/O, its creator took the stage to discuss how Google Assistant is expanding its capabilities and reach on smartphones and Google Home. Google Home, a standalone voice activated smart-appliance and speaker, is getting the most attention, with a number of significant improvements on the way. In a few months, Google Home will be able to make hands-free VOIP calls to any phone in the U.S. or Canada for free.

Google kicked off its big I/O developer conference on Wednesday by unveiling a new voice-powered digital assistant along with plans to use that assistant to power a hardware device similar to Amazon's Echo. While the tool and hardware device look promising, some watching the event couldn't help but question why the assistant lacks some memorable name. And Google has... Google Assistant and Google Home? But there's an argument that not having a proper name may be a strength, not a weakness, of Google's new products for two key reasons. Incredibly odd how Google refuses to name its AI system.