Google Home brings iDevices into its smart home family
iDevices outlets, sockets and switches now play nice with all three major smart home assistants -- Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
Starting today, you can use the Google Assistant built into your Google Home to control gear from iDevices.
Enable Assistant from the iDevices app, then link to your iDevices account in your Google Home app. Once you're setup, you can use Google's wake words, "Hey Google" or "OK Google" to issue voice commands to your always-listening Google Home or a phone with the Google Assistant built in. You'll be able to control any iDevices products including the company's outlets, sockets and switches.
It's been quite a month for the Google Home. Since late March, the smart speaker from the search giant has been adding new smart devices into its repertoire at a blistering pace.
The Home was designed to emulate the Amazon Echo -- another always-listening smart speaker that can act as a music streamer, a smart home hub and a personal assistant. The Echo holds the upper ground in the battle between the platforms, but within the past few weeks, Google's taken big strides to help it catch up both on the smart home front and overall.
iDevices is another nice add for the Home, and joining with Google marks an important milestone for iDevices as well. The smart home company is now one of the few brands that works with all three major smart home assistants -- the Google Assistant, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.
The Google Home still has a little ways to go to catch the Echo in smart home versatility -- Amazon's assistant Alexa has more than 10,000 third-party skills -- but these last couple of weeks have made the comeback seem possible. Amazon's not idly letting Google play catch up, though. Today, the retailer announced a new Alexa device with a touchscreen -- the Echo Show -- and announced voice calling for the Echo.