Google Home or Amazon Alexa, which is best to buy? Smart speakers – all you need to know
- Amazon has dominated the home voice assistant market since the launch of the original Echo in 2014, but it has no smartphone synergies to exploit
- Google is making up ground, and its Assistant is on more than one billion devices, primarily Android smartphones
OK, Google, so what’s it going to be? You or Alexa? Smart speakers, and the ability to use a voice to listen to music, get traffic directions, the latest weather, news updates, recipes and more are among the most popular holiday gift items, with prices starting at around US$25.
But if you’re new to the category, know that before you buy, you have to make a basic decision – which format to sign up to – because both speakers do not always work with each other and once you master the commands for one, you’re not going to want to use a different set on another speaker.
For that reason, there are often simply “Google Homes” or “Alexa manors.”
Amazon, which launched the Echo speaker five years ago, in November 2014, continues to dominate smart speakers, with rival Google catching up.
Amazon has a 61 per cent market share in smart speakers, to Google’s 24 per cent, according to Voicebot.ai. Apple released the HomePod in 2018, but it sold poorly (with a two per cent market share), and Apple has not updated the category. So we’ll focus just on the two main players, Amazon and Google.