You can already use your voice to control your Spotify account with Google Home. The connected speaker also works with Chromecast as a sort of voice-enabled remote control for Netflix. Now Google Home can do the same thing with your CBS All Access and CW TV accounts. Which means, of course, that you can use your voice to watch the upcoming Star Trek Discovery or the latest episode of The Flash with Chromecast built-in. The CBS All Access addition was first spotted by Android Police.

Google Home's built-in speaker is merely passable, and the smart-home device doesn't have a display at all. But you can use voice commands to stream music to better speakers and to stream video to your TV. The keys are Google's Google Cast and Android TV technologies. Google Cast is a media-streaming protocol that can be found in Google's own Chromecast (audio and video), Chromecast Audio (audio only), and numerous third-party products. Android TV is a smart TV platform present in various media-streaming boxes and TVs, including models from Nvidia, Xiaomi, Sony, Sharp, and Philips.

Google Home has picked some cool high-profile features over the past few weeks, including support for multiple accounts and access to millions of recipes, but a new feature that has flown in under the radar might be even more useful. Instead of paying top dollar on a bulky white noise machine for you or your newborn baby, your Google Home can now fill your room with soothing ambient sounds. There are 15 in all, ranging from a crackling fireplace to a babbling brook. And since they'll most often be used when you're already tired and stressed out, Google has made it super easy to operate. If you say, "OK Google, help me relax," your Google Home will play a random ambient noise for the next hour (or until you tell it to stop).

Since Home arrived a few months ago, Google has been regularly adding new features to the compact speaker and its virtual assistant. Today, the company announced that the connected device can now be used to control smart home gadgets from Belkin's WeMo line and Honeywell. This adds more options for controlling lights, switches, thermostats and more with a simple "Ok Google" voice command. Google Home already plays nice with the likes of Nest, Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings to help you control connected home devices. It also works with audio and TV gear from Vizio, LG and Sony to keep tabs on music and visuals with a hand from Chromecast.

Hyundai has partnered with Google to make its vehicles compatible with Google Assistant. This will allow Hyundai vehicle owners to do things like ask Google to start their car, lock the doors or set the temperature car. Google Assistant will let you control some of the same things that Blue Links allows you to control via your smartphone. An example, you can ask Google Assistant about a nearby restaurant and then follow it with "Ok Google, tell Blue Link to send the address to my Santa Fe." You can also use new commands to operate the horn and lights, start charging your Hyundai plug-ins and more.

Google wants its Home speaker and virtual assistant to make you forget about Alexa. To do so, the device will need to add a bunch of new features to catch up to Amazon's gadget. Just in time for your holiday binge watching, the company has added voice controls for Netflix. There's one big caveat though: You'll need to have a Chromecast connected to Home for your spoken commands to work. If you meet that criteria, saying "OK Google, play The Crown from Netflix on my TV" or "OK Google, play White Christmas on Netflix on my TV" will begin streaming your show or movie of choice.

Time to make the most of them! Google is working hard to make Google Home your home's central entertainment hub. With the latest update, you can now link Netflix with the Google Home app and "OK, Google" things like launching a binge session of Stranger Things. You can also do cool things like launch a slideshow of your pictures from last Christmas on your Google-connected TV. The Amazon Echo-competitor is playing a game of catchup; but Google Home has the advantage of being able to leverage home networks that are already serving up streaming content to TVs and speakers via Chromecast and Chromecast Audio devices.

"...one thing that we are all clear about is the days of three top text ads followed by ten organic results is a thing of the past in the voice first world"-- Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice president of advertising and commerce, November 29, 2016 During an investor call [3] on November 29, 2016 Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice president of advertising and commerce at Google spoke to the coming shift of their business model as voice first device interactions begin to dominate our lives. Web based search will never fully disappear, but a generation of kids are growing up around the Voice First revolution and fully expect a computer to be something they talk to and talks back. Just like this generation now no longer has CDs, DVDs, Tapes or Records, the next generation will expect Voice interaction, not with pages of search results but AI assisted, ontology and taxonomy perfect answers, most particularly one answer. You and I will not tolerate radio-like advertisements, nor would we tolerate a telephone-like IVR list of advertisers. Thus, the writing is on the wall.

Is Google aware that Voice First devices will break the pay-per-click business model? "…one thing that we are all clear about is the days of three top text ads followed by ten organic results is a thing of the past in the voice first world"-- Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice president of advertising and commerce, November 29, 2016 During an investor call [3] on November 29, 2016 Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Advertising and Commerce at Google, spoke to the coming shift of their business model as voice first device interactions begin to dominate our lives. Web-based search will never fully disappear, but a generation of kids are growing up around the Voice First revolution and fully expect a computer to be something they talk to and talks back. Just like this generation now no longer has CDs, DVDs, tapes or records, the next generation will expect voice interaction, not with pages of search results but AI assisted, ontology, and taxonomy perfect answers, most particularly one answer. You and I will not tolerate radio-like advertisements, nor would we tolerate a telephone-like IVR list of advertisers.