Serenity Cladwell reviewing Apple’s HomePod, Sonos One, Amazon Echo and Google Home Max.
The Google Home Max is an embarrassment of a speaker for its cost
So it appears either that
- Google’s AI prowess does not extend to audio, although it worked for cameras. Maybe they didn’t have an advantage in data, and in order to get the data, you may need to have special acoustic facilities designed by real experts in the field.
- For Google’s AI to deliver top notch performance, it needs to be on more or less an equal playing ground in regards to hardware. For image processing, both Apple and the Pixel probably source the hardware from the same vendor (Sony) so Google had an easy path to high quality hardware. Not so with audio.
- Google rushed it and released an inferior product but priced it high anyway.
Without further information, I would say all are plausible at this point. It does suggest however that there are certain important pre-requisites that are not always under Google’s control, which would be required for their AI to produce top notch results.
Naofumi Kagami 