Private Ears… Are Listening to You

Sure, Amazon and Google are harvesting all of the words spoken in your home in order to sell the info for profit, but ain’t it fun!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a Google Home.  I know it’s always listening.  However, I’m pretty sure most phones already do this by default and I’m not concerned at this point if it hears me singing ‘B-I-N-G-O’ with my toddler.  It’s an item I, and millions of others have welcomed into the home.  By choice.

Do you have one of these ‘helpers’ in your home?  Which one?  What’s the most useful thing it does for you? Let me know, [email protected].

Competition is tight in this consumer space.  This year at CES, both companies are trying to outmaneuver each other with new features.  Here’s a piece from the WSJ;

Amazon and Google aren’t just interested in new areas to embed their voice assistants. They also need to expand their ever-growing arsenals of voice-activated apps, what Amazon calls “skills” and Google calls “actions.”

Amazon needs to have a presence at CES if it wants to partner with the best, said J.P. Gownder, an analyst with market research firm Forrester, while Google needs to show it’s serious about the smart-home market to make up for lost time.

“Amazon has a bit of a head start here. They have more partnerships. They have more skills than Google has actions,” he said. “But Google is not taking it lying down.”