[ehsankia]

I'm not sure how Google dropedp the ball? I see your argument that Apple was also well situated to create this, but other than starting a bit late, what has Google done wrong?

They are catching up very quickly, since like Apple, they are in a much better position to create this technology as they have most of the ingredients already. Google Home has managed to mostly catch up in 6 months to a product that's been out for over 2 years. 3rd party support is growing very fast, the new SDK opens many doors, the IFTTT/Actions support allows tinkerers to hack up cool new features, and when it comes to conversational AI, most agree that Google is far ahead.

That being said, the competition is still fierce and I'm loving the innovations each side brings.

[smokinn]

The Nexus Q was Google dropping the ball: https://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-google-nexus-...

I have a couple of friends who still have one in a drawer somewhere and it was just poor execution all around. They could have been way ahead of the curve but now they're playing catchup. They're definitely still very well positioned and catching up fast though. Google's AI capability and straightfoward integration with exclusive market-leading products (Google Now, Google Maps, etc.) will likely make them a leader eventually unless they drop the ball again.

[dtien]

I suppose for both Google and Apple 'dropping the ball' not only relates to starting late, but also

a) having the ingredients way before Amazon

b) knowing the market for such a product was viable(people were ready) and desirable($$ could be huge)

c) and having made failed attempts at it

Apple and Google both tried to attack it through the SmartTV effort, which came and went and didn't amount to much. People didn't want to spend upwards of $1K for such a thing, whoops. Then Google purchased Nest, thinking that would be a nice backdoor into the Home automated system -- I have a Nest also, good product, but again, not the right entry way for this product category.

Than along comes Amazon and creates essentially a wireless smart speaker, that you can talk to, at a $100 price tag. Boom.

Don't get me wrong, Google Home is catching up fast and I had a heavy debate/research session when we got Alexa on whether I should exchange it for Home. But in the end, it just didn't matter, Alexa did things well enough at this point. Google may have the better, more widely adopted ecosystem (Gmail, Calendar, etc), the Voice assistant is likely better from what I've read, and I have no doubt Google can do the SDK/app ecosystem in a great way. But really, I feel like Alexa is doing things just well enough to keep the competition at bay, and with their head start, they're owning the consumer mindshare. And the combination of those 2 things might be enough to fend off any newcomers now.... though let the competition and innovation continue -- on that I agree!