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Planning a Trip With the Help of Google Home - The New York Times

posted onJune 17, 2017
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Article snippet: The Google Home personal assistant, a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant, arrived in stores in November with some neat tricks for travelers: the ability to suggest nearby restaurants, translate foreign words, convert currency, track flight status and answer fact-based queries such as, “How much does Global Entry cost?” Roughly six months later, it’s doing things it couldn’t before, like tracking flight prices, giving directions and providing same-day updates on traffic to airports. Anyone vaguely familiar with other personal virtual assistants, like Alexa from Amazon or Siri from Apple, knows that this technology is a work in progress. But I was impressed with how far Google Assistant and Google Home have come in a short period, and it’s not difficult to see them becoming a larger part of travelers’ lives in the near future. The Google Assistant lives not only within the Google Home speaker, but also on Android phones and smartwatches and recently became available on iPhones. It is capable of a wide range of tasks beyond answering users’ questions. You can use your voice to control your home’s thermostat, play shows and movies on your television or play music throughout your house. The first and most important thing to know about Google Home is that while it speaks several human languages, it also has a language of its own. Google recommends starting each interaction with “O.K., Google” (“Hey, Google” works as well), which will prompt the speaker... Link to the full article to read more

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