Google announced a lot of new bells and whistles Wednesday — several of which, it turns out, are already offered by rivals such as Amazon, Apple and Facebook.
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These days, it’s not unusual to find tech giants and their plucky startup rivals copying each other’s tools and features — sometimes improving on them and sometimes just playing catch-up.
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Echoing the Echo
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Google added features to its internet-connected Home speaker — such as hands-free calling. That echoes Amazon’s Echo speaker, which was released earlier and so has had more time to acquire a wider range of abilities.
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The new abilities announced Wednesday will also enable the Home speaker to control and interact with a variety of Whirlpool and Jenn-Air appliances later this year. For instance, you can ask the digital assistant within Home to turn on the dishwasher or set the temperature on the oven. This is already available on the Echo and other devices that use its Alexa assistant.
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Your Seeing Eye
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Google’s new Lens tool is the stuff of science fiction. It lets people point their camera at things to find out more information about them. So if you see a flower, you can point your camera at it to find out its name. (The same, sadly, cannot be said for strangers you meet in a bar yet, unless he or she is a celebrity you didn’t’ recognize.)
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Samsung is trying some of that with its new Bixby Vision feature on the Galaxy S8 phones. Pinterest has a similar tool too. Also called Lens, it lets people point their cameras at real-world items and find out where to buy them, or find similar things online. Take a selfie, and you’ll get similar hairstyle and makeup ideas (even if you aren’t wearing any makeup).
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Slimming Down
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Though not a competitor, Google’s slimmed-down phone operating system aimed at cheap Android…