Miscellany

Google Home vs. Amazon Echo #1: When does Costco open?

August 26, 2017

Google’s been the No. 1 search engine in the world for more than a decade because no other search engine can answer as many questions. You type something into its search box, and chances are pretty darn high that you’re going to find what you want pretty quickly.

That should extend to voice search, too, shouldn’t it? Numerous studies and surveys have suggested that Google Home is a much smarter device than Amazon Echo — like, 6x smarter according to the study in that Search Engine Land link.

But despite all the surveys, my experience with each device is that Echo/Alexa is a lot smarter than she’s credited as being, and Google Home sometimes makes inexplicable mistakes. Like this recent example — an early weekday morning when I needed to know what time our local Costco would open.

For some reason, Google Home thought I was asking about Costco Gasoline, which usually opens 2-3 hours before the main store. But I never said the word “gasoline” in my question. The Echo, on the other hand, knew what I was asking and answered me correctly. Very strange that Google couldn’t answer this one.

I’m fascinated by voice search, in general, and by these smart speaker devices more specifically. So plan on seeing more posts and videos in the future showing how well and poorly they respond to certain types of questions.

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