If there is one reason why Amazon’s Echo platform is gaining traction so quickly is simply because unlike Apple’s Siri, Amazon did not choose to lock it into its own ecosystem. Instead the company opened it up and allowed other developers and hardware manufacturers to use its technology to integrate Alexa into non-Amazon apps and devices.
It was a smart move and it is one that Google is looking to follow because the company has recently announced that they will be releasing a developer preview of the Google Assistant SDK. What this means for non-developers is that with the SDK made available to third-parties, they’ll be able to bake Google Assistant into their own devices, meaning that in the future we can look forward to alternatives to Google Home.
As to what we can expect in the future, that’s hard to say but Google has suggested devices like smart mirrors that are voice-enabled as possible uses for the SDK, although we wouldn’t be surprised if we started to see more Google Home-like devices since those tend to be more generally appealing.
Google is encouraging companies who are interested to reach out to them possibly for discussions, so as an end-user we guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence), Google and Google Assistant.