The Internet of Things — many of us have a less-kind name for it — wasn't going to be fixed in a day. It wasn't going to be fixed in the blazing sun in Mountain View in May, when Google first announced its plans for Google Assistant and Google Home. And it wasn't going to fixed today when Google announced more details of its long-awaited (I'd say "overdue," really) competitor for the Amazon Echo.

And it's not going to be fixed a month from now, when Google Home ships. Or a little later in the year when Google Wifi joins it. No. The Internet of Things is vast and complex, and we're lucky to have a hub that manages to even loosely wrangle all those things together.

That's what we've got with the Echo — with "Alexa" — today. We've got a semi-smart connected speaker that, while having seen its intelligence grow by leaps and bounds over the nearly two years of its short life, still remains shackled by the fact that Amazon isn't Google, and you're only as smart as what you know. Alexa tends to hit that wall quicker than you'd expect.

Amazon isn't Google, and you're only as smart as what you know. Alexa tends to hit that wall quicker than you'd expect.

And that's where Google has always had the leg up. What Google does — especially these days in the new era of "machine learning" — is about intelligence. And that's where Google Assistant comes in. We've only gotten a taste of it so far, in the not-quite-a-must-download Allo messenger app. But you can be sure this new iteration of Google Now (RIP) is a major part of the future of Google as a search company. Ask and it'll answer. Command and it'll obey.

While the list of initial IoT partners is small — Philips Hue, Nest, Samsung SmartThings, and IFTTT — it runs the gamut, for sure. And that list certainly will grow once Google opens the APIs to more developers later this year.

And while we still have a good bit of exploring to do once we get Google Home into our homes, it already appears that it'll be able to control all our things at least as well as Echo, if not better. If you've got Philips Hue lights and ever tried to have Alexa change the color, you'll know what I mean.

And finally, there's the simple fact that Google Home is a traditional Google Cast target. That is, if you can play it on your Android device you can have Google Home play it instead, via the Cast protocol, and not have to deal with the vastly more clunky Bluetooth.

Amazon Echo isn't dead, though. Far from it. Amazon is still a shopping destination unlike any other in this part of the world. And so it can plaster its own products on its pages better than Google ever can. (And it wouldn't surprise us in the least to see Google Home banned from its pages just like Chromecast was.)