Launch of rival to Amazon Echo takes fight to Jeff Bezos’s Seattle-based company, but experts say it’s still Google’s to lose

Google is launching its rival to Amazon’s Echo, the Google Home, in the UK as the battle for the living room hots up.

The smart speaker, which can play music, control Internet of Things devices, and answer questions, will cost British customers £129, £20 less than Amazon’s Echo, when it launches in Britain on 6 April.

Google first launched the Home in the US in November, alongside the introduction of the Pixel phone and Google Assistant AI. Google Assistant is a voice-controlled digital assistant that runs on phones, Google Home and even smart TVs, and can provide context-aware assistance, knowing what sort of environment it’s in.



Since the initial launch, Google Assistant has gradually come to more Android phones, as well as Android Wear-based smartwatches. It is also integrated into Google Allo, one of the company’s plethora of chat apps. But the Google Home device is the only smart speaker to feature Google’s assistant.

By contrast, Alexa, the AI assistant built into the Echo, has been made available to any third-party licensee who wants to sign up, meaning that as well as the Echo family of products, there are now other smart speakers, cars and even washing machines with Alexa integration.



Google and Amazon are shaping up for a long battle to dominate the field, but Amazon has a large first-mover advantage, according to Edison Investment Research’s Richard Windsor, with 10m Echoes shipped compared to less than 1m Google Home devices.

Even so, Windsor said: “The Google Home experience is so superior to Alexa that we still see a risk of Amazon losing this race.” In response, Amazon has been reaching out to third-party developers, encouraging the creation of apps which work with Alexa but not Google Assistant.

Windsor said: “The result is that very few of the smart home device developers are making sure that their devices work with Google Home, giving many users more reason go with Amazon’s Echo devices rather than Google.

“Amazon is also very fortunate that the market’s view of Alexa is so positive, as a side by side test of the Amazon Echo against Google Home shows how inferior Amazon is compared to Google,” he said.

Windsor added: “This is why it is still Google’s battle to lose, but Amazon is clearly doing everything that it can to ensure that it is Alexa rather than Google that dominates the potentially extremely lucrative market for intelligent home automation.”

Google also announced its Google Wifi, its mesh system that aims to give consistently strong coverage, will come to the UK, also priced from £129, and launching on 6 April.