Speaker 1: Google Smart Speaker gets a screen. It's now called the
Speaker 1: Google Home Hub.
Speaker 2: What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech, and joining me today is
Speaker 1: Ashton Udahl from Google Home Hub.
Speaker 2: He's a product manager there, and this is a brand
Speaker 2: new product. Think of it as a.
Speaker 1: Tablet, but with a Google Home built in. This can
Speaker 1: go on your counter, it can go next to your bed,
Speaker 1: wherever you need a screen combined with the smarts of
Speaker 1: Google and all that cool stuff the speaker can do.
Speaker 2: Ashton, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Rich.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's dive into the Google Home Hub.
Speaker 1: This is a product that we kind of assumed what
Speaker 1: happened sooner than later. It kind of mixes the best
Speaker 1: of the screen on your phone with the smart speaker
Speaker 1: plus Google.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We wanted to build off the early success that our
Speaker 4: speaker products had in the market and learn from those
Speaker 4: and we went out. We talked to customers to understand
Speaker 4: what they really wanted, and we realized that you know,
Speaker 4: most of I should say many of Google's most popular
Speaker 4: services search, photos, YouTube, calendar, maps.
Speaker 3: All these things leverage a visual interface.
Speaker 4: So we realized that when we built Google Home Hub
Speaker 4: and we brought a display into the mix that this
Speaker 4: was going to.
Speaker 3: Be a really powerful opportunity to help people in their homes.
Speaker 2: So just some nuts and bolts of the device.
Speaker 1: It's got to seven inch screen, no camera, but it
Speaker 1: does have a light sensor, which is really handy for
Speaker 1: adapting the screen to sort of the different rooms you
Speaker 1: might put it in. It's got a speaker, and of
Speaker 1: course the display is really important because if you have
Speaker 1: this bedside, you want it to function as sort of
Speaker 1: maybe a display with pictures during the day, but at
Speaker 1: night when you're trying to sleep, you don't want it
Speaker 1: to be that busy.
Speaker 2: So tell me what you did for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we wanted this product to be able to
Speaker 4: go in any room in the home, and an important
Speaker 4: part of doing that is not making people feel like
Speaker 4: this was another techie gadget with blue screen light and
Speaker 4: blinky lights. So we incorporated a sensor that measures the lighting,
Speaker 4: the brightness and the color in your environment, and it
Speaker 4: actually emulates.
Speaker 3: That lighting on the display itself. So you want to
Speaker 3: set the.
Speaker 4: Mood in the evening, you have light bulb incandescent light
Speaker 4: bulbs on, or it gets a little bit darker. We
Speaker 4: actually bring down the brightness of the screen and we
Speaker 4: match the color temperature so it feels just like another
Speaker 4: photo frame around your home.
Speaker 1: And so some of the things you can do with
Speaker 1: this device is think, you know, a Google Home speaker,
Speaker 1: but with the added ability to kind of see what
Speaker 1: you're doing. So let's say you ask for directions somewhere,
Speaker 1: It's going to visually show you those directions. Let's say
Speaker 1: you want to see your Nest cam outside the front door,
Speaker 1: it can visually show you that camera.
Speaker 2: It can control your smart.
Speaker 1: Home devices, but not just control, but also has that
Speaker 1: missing link of like it can tell you the status
Speaker 1: if they're on or off right exactly.
Speaker 4: So one of the things people wanted most was a
Speaker 4: sense of control in their homes and smart home devices
Speaker 4: they aim to deliver that, but a lot of times
Speaker 4: you just feel like you're searching through a lot of
Speaker 4: apps and trying to find the right one.
Speaker 3: And it's a bit of a hassle.
Speaker 4: And we wanted to do away with that for people,
Speaker 4: so we gave people what's called the Home View. It's
Speaker 4: a single interface that's super easy access that you can
Speaker 4: see a summary for everything that's going on in your
Speaker 4: home and tap right in and control each of those things, and.
Speaker 1: Tell me about Obviously, this is going to be something
Speaker 1: that people look at pictures on, they watch little video
Speaker 1: clips on, see cooking videos, you know, if it's in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, you can see you know, how to chop
Speaker 1: an onion. Tell me about that screen and kind of
Speaker 1: what you envision people viewing on this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so of course you can get all kinds of
Speaker 4: answers powered by Google Search.
Speaker 3: And all kinds of information.
Speaker 2: There. It is right there, it is.
Speaker 3: It sounds pretty good, right, music as well.
Speaker 4: Music streaming media, your favorite shows, sports highlights. It has
Speaker 4: YouTube music and you can also set up YouTube TV
Speaker 4: on your hub. So this can now become your kitchen
Speaker 4: TV on your countertop, taking the latest highlights from your
Speaker 4: favorite sports team.
Speaker 3: And it's just really exciting.
Speaker 4: To be able to give people access to so much
Speaker 4: content out there via YouTube.
Speaker 1: Now, I think the trojan horse of this device is
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously a lot of people know about the
Speaker 1: Google Home and the speakers. Maybe they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't really need that. Perhaps I don't think that's true,
Speaker 1: but some people might think that. But with this, the
Speaker 1: idea that you can have your photos displayed on this
Speaker 1: people like the idea of we take all these digital pictures,
Speaker 1: they kind of live on our phones, on our computers.
Speaker 1: We don't see them as much as we'd like to write.
Speaker 1: So with this you might have the people who adapt
Speaker 1: it or adopt it just for the photo ability that
Speaker 1: it's going to show ambient pictures throughout the day, right absolutely.
Speaker 4: You know, Google, we make phones with some of the
Speaker 4: world leading camera capabilities, but you take lots of pictures
Speaker 4: and you realize that they just end up staying on
Speaker 4: your phone. As you said, it's really hard to enjoy them.
Speaker 4: And so Hub really completes the puzzle here because now
Speaker 4: it gives you a great way to consume those photos
Speaker 4: around your home. Of course, you can create albums and
Speaker 4: stream them to Hub to show your favorite photos, but
Speaker 4: we realized that that takes a lot of work, and
Speaker 4: people with you know, busy households or families, they don't
Speaker 4: often have times to stop and do that. So we
Speaker 4: said to ourselves, how about we take all of the
Speaker 4: work out of this, and the Google Photos Assistant can
Speaker 4: actually pick the photos of the people that you select
Speaker 4: and care about most and then automagically stream those to
Speaker 4: your Google Home Hub.
Speaker 3: So everybody can enjoy those work free throughout the day.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about a feature called live Albums, and
Speaker 1: this takes all the guests work out of sharing pictures
Speaker 1: because I can say, here's my two kids. I can
Speaker 1: tell the Google Assistant, these are.
Speaker 2: The pictures I'd like stream to.
Speaker 1: My mom's Google Home Hub, and it will actually find
Speaker 1: those pictures of my kids that I take and share
Speaker 1: them with her exactly.
Speaker 4: So it takes all the work of curating the album
Speaker 4: out for you. So you tell the Google Assistant the
Speaker 4: people you care about most, and the Google Assistant can
Speaker 4: go through your pictures and recognize the best pictures of
Speaker 4: those people. It does that by filtering out all the
Speaker 4: pictures with poor lighting, blurry motion, eyes closed, and it
Speaker 4: picks the best pictures of those and then automatically streams
Speaker 4: them as they get updated to your mom's hub.
Speaker 1: Now it's interesting because I've noticed in Google Photos that
Speaker 1: it highlights pictures that it makes them bigger, the ones
Speaker 1: that thinks are the best, right yep, So this is
Speaker 1: kind of building upon that. We knew this was kind
Speaker 1: of doing that, but now it's actually putting those pictures
Speaker 1: in its own little like putting that smart to work.
Speaker 4: Exactly, So it's really making AI work for you by
Speaker 4: being able to take your photos and automatically pick the
Speaker 4: best ones. Now you can put a hub anywhere in
Speaker 4: your home and enjoy those pictures all day long.
Speaker 1: And other things you could do with the hub pretty
Speaker 1: standard stuff like make phone calls, look up directions.
Speaker 2: To places, obviously, Google search for just about anything. Is
Speaker 2: there anything else we should know about this device?
Speaker 4: You know, I think there's a lot in there. You
Speaker 4: mentioned a lot of great ones. It's a great secret
Speaker 4: sous chef. It can be your secret weapon in the kitchen.
Speaker 4: You can come home and if you just can't think
Speaker 4: of what to make, you can actually tell it what
Speaker 4: ingredients you have, and it'll suggest great recipes for you
Speaker 4: based on those ingredients. So it can take a lot
Speaker 4: of the thinking work and guesswork out of the cooking
Speaker 4: and the kitchen.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of ways into the device.
Speaker 4: The best thing about it is people generally see a
Speaker 4: problem that they want to solve with it, and then
Speaker 4: once they get in they get exposed to these other capabilities,
Speaker 4: and over time it just gets.
Speaker 3: More and more useful, more and more delightful for people.
Speaker 2: Where do you see people putting this in their homes.
Speaker 4: Really, it can go anywhere, and that's what it's designed for.
Speaker 4: So of course the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom,
Speaker 4: those will probably be the primary places. But the screen
Speaker 4: is big enough to enjoy a video, say if you
Speaker 4: set it up, you know, in a little bit.
Speaker 3: Further away on a shelf or a side table. You know.
Speaker 4: It can also be small enough to fit on a
Speaker 4: small table and say a hallway.
Speaker 3: So really it's extremely versatile.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure we talked about this, but there's
Speaker 1: no camera on this device.
Speaker 3: That's correct. So it's a choice that was an absolute choice.
Speaker 4: So we really wanted people to be able to enjoy
Speaker 4: the Google Assistant giving them help in any room in
Speaker 4: their home that they choose. We didn't want them to
Speaker 4: have to think about, well, what do I do in
Speaker 4: that room? Or who does what in front of the camera.
Speaker 4: We wanted to remove all of that friction out of
Speaker 4: the thought process. And as a device that's scared to
Speaker 4: be able to go in any room in your home,
Speaker 4: we thought it best to for this for this first product,
Speaker 4: to not have a camera and.
Speaker 2: To enable that when can we get it and how much.
Speaker 4: On shelf ten, twenty two October twenty second for one
Speaker 4: hundred and.
Speaker 3: Forty nine dollars.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ashton Newdell, thanks so much for joining me on
Speaker 1: the podcast again. It's called the Google Home Hub, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty cool device. I've got to say. I've
Speaker 1: been playing with it and it kind of is the
Speaker 1: missing link between all this Google stuff with the Chrome
Speaker 1: Cast and the Google Home and now you've got the
Speaker 1: Hub with the screen, and of course your phone in
Speaker 1: your pocket, so screens everywhere.
Speaker 2: That's kind of the future of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see more on the Google
Speaker 1: Home Hub, you can look in the show notes, or
Speaker 1: you can go to.
Speaker 2: My website, Rich on tech dot tv. Thanks so much
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 3: I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you real soon.