Google last night launched its latest Pixel smartphones along with a bunch of devices including Chromecast and a Bluetooth speaker called Google Home. Google Home right now competes directly to Amazon’s Echo.
Google Home is essentially a 6 inch x 4 inch speaker which is always listening to your voice. Apart from playing music from your smartphone or from any other device, Google can perform a bunch of other functions. The speakers has a 2-inch driver and dual 2-inch passive radiators on the sides. On top, there is a capacitive touch panel for controls and four LED’s which shows Google’s color language. The touch panel can be used to adjust volume, pause or play audio, can take calls etc. It also sports two microphones on top which are always on unless you press the mute button on the side which disable the mics. 
Google claims that the microphone listening mechanism inside Google Home is intelligent as well as attentive. Attentive in the sense that it instantly recognize your voice once you have set it up. Further, Google claims that the speaker can also recognize your voice in extreme noisy conditions. To activate one has to just say ‘Ok Google’.
On the other hand, it is intelligent in the sense as it don’t only play music on your smartphones but can also play music from apps such as YouTube, Spotify etc. Not only this, Google Assistant is always there. So one can ask questions which he would ask to Google Assistant on its smartphone. For instance, one can ask about the Weather or questions such as How much traffic will be there on my way to Delhi? But the ability of this amazing speaker doesn’t end here. Google has announced that it will release Assistant SDK for developers so that they can hop on and modify according to their needs. So soon it may allow users to book Uber cab or order food from nearby restaurants.
In order to perform all these functions, one has to set up his voice and with time Google Home improves both on recognition and answering your queries.
On top of these features, Google Home comes with modular design with a lot of changeable metal and fabric bases in colours like Carbon, Copper, Snow, Mango, Marine and Violet.
Right now, Google Home is available for pre-orders on in US for $129 (Rs 8,500 approximately) and is expected to start shipping from November 4. There has been no information as to when or whether the device will land in India or not.