Amazon vs. Google – Stealing thunder

In a timely fashion, Amazon touts Alexa’s superiority.

• At the same time as Google was launching a new and improved version of Google Assistant at Google i/o, Amazon was quick to remind everyone that its assistant is present on almost everything.
• Amazon Alexa is now supported on 60,000 different devices from 7,400 brands up from 10,000 just one year ago and 20,000 in September 2018.
• This compared to the rather puny figure of 10,000 that Google reported in September 2018 which Google has yet to update.
• I am pretty sure that if it had trebled that figure to 30,000, this would have been a major headline leading the i/o developer conference.
• In effect, Amazon Alexa is available on almost anything that one could think of except for Google’s own products which are now carried under the Nest brand.
• When it comes to devices shipped, I suspect that the two companies are much closer together in numbers as the largest brands are the ones most likely to offer both assistants.
• However, it is Google’s coverage of the long tail of search that makes its solution so compelling and I think the same is likely to prove true for Amazon.
• This means that a consumer can buy almost any smart home device globally (except for China) and be 100% certain that it will work with Alexa as opposed to Google where one will still have to check on the box.
• If one combines this with its WiFi Mesh router Eero in which Amazon is likely to embed the functionality to control and integrate all Alexa enabled devices, then the smart home fragmentation problem will have been almost entirely solved.
• This assumes that the user is happy to use Alexa at home and it is here where Google has a chance.
• This because in terms of the product and its performance, Google Assistant is significantly better than Amazon Alexa.
• Its ability to understand and deliver what the user is asking for is far superior thanks to Google’s better AI as well as Google’s world-leading knowledge graph which backs up the assistant.
• Furthermore, as the Google Assistant still largely resides in the cloud, its capabilities can be updated by Google at the push of a button.
• However, since a resurgence against Amazon in 2017, Google has largely gone sideways and has failed to make up any meaningful ground on Amazon in 2018 (see here).
• This led to another whitewash by Amazon at CES 2018 (see here), a success that it appears to have really made the most of having tripled device support in just over 6 months.
• The result is that Google is increasingly looking like a loser in the battle to control the smart home despite having a much better product.
• This is exactly what happened with the war between VHS and Betamax in home video cassette recorders where an inferior product lost out due to the momentum and superior market presence of its rival.
• Google’ still dominates the smartphone which remains the most important device category for assistant usage but as the usability improves, this is rapidly spreading into invoking the assistant directly on the device.
• Consequently, Google’s one chance to reverse this trend is to drive usage of the assistant back to the smartphone where it is dominant and Amazon is not present.
• I have not seen much at Google i/o that would lead me to believe that this is imminent.
• Hence, I continue to think that the balance remains in Amazon’s favour when it comes to controlling and managing the smart home.