There is a war going on between Amazon and Google’s assistants. For the past year or so, the two companies have been aggressively pushing products for your home that run smart assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home. However, the two companies are now partnering with third party companies that are building their assistants in everything from smart-mirrors to lawnmowers. All of these smart devices are coming to market now!
Just a couple of years ago, neither Google nor Amazon cared about consumer electronics, but now they are pushing electronic products everywhere. The message is very clear, Amazon and Google are competing to be in every aspect of our lives. According to a study from TRUSTe/NCSA poll, almost 92% of internet users worry about privacy online and only 31% understand how companies share their personal information.
The rise of voice enabled devices
The battle is only heating up in 2019. As of January 2019, the Google Home Assistant was on over 1 Billion devices, which increased from 500 million in May 2018. Google now has more than 1,600 partners that manufacture over 10,000 smart home devices running Google Assistant. It is important to note that most of the 1 Billion are Android smartphones which have Google Assistant pre-installed. It is projected that almost 50% of all searches across the internet will be voice-based by the year 2020. For home devices, Google Assistant is build in all sorts of devices including smart door locks, coffee maker, instant pot, headphones, and home security cameras. Amazon also has many device makers that are integrating Alexa. Amazon has sold over 100 million Alexa devices that represent more than 28,000 smart home products manufactured by 4,500 device makers. There is also a toilet with Alexa built-in, so you can ask Alexa to flush, play music, lift the lid, warm up the seat, or check traffic before you leave for work.
In addition, Amazon and Google both have assistants that can help you protect your home. Amazon’s brand Ring that works with home security system that work with Alexa and Google’s brand Nest also has home security system that works with Google’s assistant. Whether you like it or not, both Amazon and Google are becoming nearly omnipresent. As the home assistants learn from what you ask of them, they are able to learn more than ever about you and your habits, which equals to more data!!!
The Data = BIG Business ($$$)
The Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini are competitively priced at around $50, so Amazon and Google are basically giving away these devices for dirt cheap prices for the sole purpose of getting into as many homes as possible. At selling price of $50, the profit gained from the sale of these smart speakers is most likely very low. The important question is how does Google or Amazon benefit from these voice-enabled products? As you may have guessed it, consumer data is the answer. Most consumers are not just using these smart assistants for shopping as the voice assistants are also being used to perform routine tasks such as checking the weather, searching the web, listening to music and getting news and traffic information. Nevertheless, the usage data is important for Google and Amazon. You are the product.
For Google (Parent: Alphabet), 70% of revenue comes from the company’s advertising platform, which includes Google’s search engine, Google Maps, and Google Chrome. With voice at the core of future technology products, Google needs to ensure that voice is integrated into its products so that advertisers can continue to benefit from consumer behavior data. This is also the main reason behind Google offering it’s Android smartphone operating system for free to manufacturers. As voice becomes more popular, Google’s aim is to keep consumers on its services by incorporating Google assistant into alarm clocks, thermostats, and cars. In order to balance the privacy concerns around data being used for advertising purposes, Google has realized that the intelligent voice assistant needs to be compelling and useful. For instance, the recently introduced Google Duplex allows the assistant to understand complex sentences, fast speech, and long remarks for a natural conversation.
For Amazon, the objective is to keep dominating the market for online shopping as nearly 50% of online shoppers search for products on its website. In addition, just behind Google and Facebook, Amazon is also building an online advertising platform. As voice becomes the backbone of tech industry, it is in Amazon’s best interest to offer voice-enabled products that retain customers on Amazon’s services. With the advertising platform, Amazon also has to provide its advertisers with meaningful data that can be useful for effective marketing. There were reports about Amazon planning to run ads on Amazon Echo devices but Amazon has denied these rumors. Even if Amazon is not able to serve ads on its devices, the data collected by the Echo devices are very valuable for advertisers. For instance, based on the search habits or buying practices of consumers, advertisers can use the data to evaluate the market trends for upcoming product campaigns. In addition, Amazon can also offer voice-enabled devices to enterprise customers for workplace productivity.
Voice enabled devices and privacy concerns
With recent reports of Amazon employees listening to user recordings, many users have raised privacy concerns around the use of voice enabled devices in their homes. According to report by Bloomberg, an Amazon global team reviews audio clips in an effort to help the voice-activated assistant respond to commands. Amazon has clarified that it does not share any user identifiable information to third party without the customer’s consent. Developers have access to anonymous data and it does not share audio recordings with developers. The important thing to understand is that devices such as Google Home Mini and Amazon Echo rely on a user command (i.e. Alexa, Google) to start the recording. However, for these devices to recognize the command word, they have to be always on and always listening.
With internet connected always listening devices, there is obviously a risk of the device misbehaving and interpreting regular conversational words as false commands. We have seen many examples of Alexa misbehaving already. For instance, Alexa started recording a couple’s private conversation and sent a recording to one of their contacts without any notifications or warnings. There were also reports of Alexa randomly laughing without prompting. In addition, there is also a risk of hackers taking control of the smart home devices for personal benefits, which is common for almost all devices that we use, so it is not unique to smart home devices. The bigger problem is that the field of voice enabled smart devices is fairly new and there is no clear understanding of how the voice recordings are being collected and processed. For most people, privacy nowadays is not a big issue if they get convenience and innovation in return. As voice represents an entirely new era of interaction with technology, the consumers should practice caution when interacting with always on voice enabled devices in your homes until the technology proves itself.
Amazon and Google have jump started the move towards a voice-first world of tech and the market is flooded with third party companies offering Alexa and Google Home enabled smart devices. Winter has arrived and the game of thrones is on for a spot in your home!
I am officially a tech addict and enjoy providing my views on matters related to this industry. I am always interested in trying out new tech gadgets and I have owned multiple smartphones including the legendary HTC One, SGS2, Nexus 4, iPhone 4, 5S, 6S, XR, Note 9. You can ask me any tech related questions in the comment section or on twitter @hookedNav