Alexa or Google Assistant?

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Bought the GF an Alexa for her birthday. She likes it. when she works from home, she has it playing soft music in the background. When we play poker we have it set a 15 minute timer to know when we up the blinds. She had to link it to her Amazon acct I believe to get the music. As far as I know, she's still happy with it.
To be honest, I didn't price the Google thingy, since she requested Alexa.
 
A friend of mine is homebound because of MS.
His wife bought him an Alexa to keep him company.

He's a funny guy and tries to drive it crazy.
Alexa, bark like a dog, or meow like a cat. Alexa, are you spying on me? (She reads the disclosure statement) .
 
I was given a Google mini pod and an Alexa echo dot. I've tried them both and both work about the same but since nearly all my devices are either Google, nest or Android based, I decided to use the mini.

Compare your list of devices and pick the platform that works best with the stuff you have.
 
Yeah. No. Neither. I don't want the damned thing listening to me and I don't trust any of the big companies not to mine my background conversations for fun and profit, or to properly safeguard records/recordings of what is said and when.

That said, I have a good understanding of how OK Google on my Android phone works and it doesn't worry me, because by design the phone is only listening for the keyword and not transmitting anything not preceded by the keyword.
 
I'm in the 'neither' group too,or more precisely, in the "why" group. To me, it seems more like a gimmick, unless you've got lots of 'smart' devices to go along with it.. (but then., you're just getting to be more & more lazy..)

"Hey Gooogle, what's the weather?" or I can look at my phone
"Hey gooogle, what time is it?? or I can look at my phone, or watch, or TV..
"Hey Google, set a timer for 3 minutes.." or I an use the timer on the stove, the phone, my watch, etc..

and the whole privacy thing, the listening in thing, the 'someone can hack it' thing..

/grumpy old man mode: off/;
 
A friend of mine is homebound because of MS.
His wife bought him an Alexa to keep him company.

He's a funny guy and tries to drive it crazy.
Alexa, bark like a dog, or meow like a cat. Alexa, are you spying on me? (She reads the disclosure statement) .

My wife also has MS and our Alexa show simply makes it easier for her. Her fine motor control is slowly going away and we can add automation devices to our home that she can use.
 
I'm hoping all this smarthome stuff shakes out over the next 10 years or so.

I'd love to be able to control all the lights and alarms and safety devices from anywhere, I just don't want to spend weeks getting it turned every time an update rolls out.

Ideally some years before my faculties decline ( as happens to us all eventually ) so I can retain my independence longer.
 
Yeah. No. Neither. I don't want the damned thing listening to me and I don't trust any of the big companies not to mine my background conversations for fun and profit, or to properly safeguard records/recordings of what is said and when.

AMEN, Brother !

None of this or any "smart appliances", either !

Dave F.
 
I have a Nest enabled smart deadbolt, a Simplisafe home alarm, a Nest thermostat, a Sony Android TV, Kasa wifi smart LED lights in many rooms and a Google home mini speaker.

This allows me to lock my door when I leave which enables the alarm and sets my thermostat in away mode. When I'm home, I unlock the door with a PIN and it disables the alarm and adjusts to the thermostat to home mode and turns on the hallway and living room lights. When I want to watch a movie, I tell Google and it dims the lights, turns on the TV and opens one of my movie apps(Plex, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime). If I need to adjust the volume, I ask Google to do it. When I'm done for the night, I tell Google and it turns off the TV, turns off the lights, turns the alarm on for the doors and windows but not the motion sensors and sets my morning wake up alarm. When I'm out in the garage working on something and listening to music or a podcast and come in, I use the built-in Chromecast and move it from my phone over to the mini speaker. When I'm cooking, I tell Google to set a timer and it does.

I haven't had to tweak anything or worry about upgrades breaking things after they're set up. Google only listens for the activation phrase and then what's said after that is sent up to the cloud to be processed. Home automation has gotten very mature in the last few years and while I can do all those things things without automation, I enjoy it and so I've decided to embrace it.

For someone who is limited physically for some reason, it could be very liberating and allow for much greater personal freedom.
 
Yeah. No. Neither. I don't want the damned thing listening to me and I don't trust any of the big companies not to mine my background conversations for fun and profit, or to properly safeguard records/recordings of what is said and when.

That said, I have a good understanding of how OK Google on my Android phone works and it doesn't worry me, because by design the phone is only listening for the keyword and not transmitting anything not preceded by the keyword.

I thought I had a good understanding as well. Try this. Put your phone in your pocket and have a conversation about a product you normally wouldn't have with someone (for example the use of Chantix for smoking cessation. Which I had with a guy at work.) Five minutes later, start scrolling through Facebook and enjoy all the Chantix ads...
 
I thought I had a good understanding as well. Try this. Put your phone in your pocket and have a conversation about a product you normally wouldn't have with someone (for example the use of Chantix for smoking cessation. Which I had with a guy at work.) Five minutes later, start scrolling through Facebook and enjoy all the Chantix ads...

I've done this test repeatedly, and never had anything come up that could be explained by surreptitious listening in. I also have monitored the data flow from my phone to the network and do not see voice activated spikes aside from when I use the phrase OK Google.

I have friends with either Alexa or Google Home products and they HAVE reported symptomatic listening in.
 
Yeah. No. Neither. I don't want the damned thing listening to me and I don't trust any of the big companies not to mine my background conversations for fun and profit, or to properly safeguard records/recordings of what is said and when.

That said, I have a good understanding of how OK Google on my Android phone works and it doesn't worry me, because by design the phone is only listening for the keyword and not transmitting anything not preceded by the keyword.
WHAT? The OK Google on your phone works exactly the same way as the OK Google home version. They are the SAME product, one is on your phone, the other is on your counter top.


Tony
 
WHAT? The OK Google on your phone works exactly the same way as the OK Google home version. They are the SAME product, one is on your phone, the other is on your counter top.


Tony
I don't have a reference handy, but as I understand it the Google home version is engineered under the assumption it has unlimited power and data to work with, while the phone version of Assistant does not. This has significant implications for how much data is sent to Google on the different platforms.
 
I don't have a reference handy, but as I understand it the Google home version is engineered under the assumption it has unlimited power and data to work with, while the phone version of Assistant does not. This has significant implications for how much data is sent to Google on the different platforms.

I certainly don't have the data to back my assertion up, but the odds of that conversation (with absolutely zero search engine or any other inputs in years) and the subsequent avalanche of ads makes coincidence incredibly unlikely to me...
 
I certainly don't have the data to back my assertion up, but the odds of that conversation (with absolutely zero search engine or any other inputs in years) and the subsequent avalanche of ads makes coincidence incredibly unlikely to me...
I can only report my experience. I've done this more than a dozen times with my current and prior phone (now, OnePlus 6T, prior: OnePlus 3T) and at no time did I get ads reflecting recent conversations. Plus my measurements of network activity. Google isn't listening in via my phone
 
Here's an example of what a quick web search will reveal:

"Google Home comes with Google Assistant built-in, but there are other ways to run Google’s virtual assistant without needing a Google Home.

First, it’s baked into the majority of Android devices on the market..."

That clearly says that Google Assistant on a home device is the same as Google Assistant on your phone. Obviously a home device may support additional commands, like 'turn on the lights', but it's the same thing otherwise.


Tony
 
Alexa or Google Assistant?

This is a great question... I think you should ask Siri this question. :p:p:p

We have google assistant at our house. A family friend gave us a mini speaker - that's how we decided on which to use.
 
Neither.

As for spying, the Facebook app has got to be the worst ever, for spying on you. I don't use it, but my wife does.

I've got personal experience on how it listens to you and reports back what you've been saying. As a test to prove it to my skeptical wife, I spoke into her phone, which was on the counter, "I want a tattoo, tattoo, tattoo". She rolled her eyes at me, and within 3 minutes, tattoo ads started to appear on her Facebook feed. She has never searched for tattoos online, being Jewish (tattoos are strictly forbidden). She then proceeded to call me a (bleep), conceding the point. :) After a few minutes, I spoke into the phone again, saying "no tattoo, don't want a tattoo". She hasn't seen an tattoo ad since...

I really dislike living in an surveilance society, wherein everything you do and say, everywhere you go, everyone you associate with, is hoovered up by either .gov or untrustworthy corporations. I think its going to come back to haunt a lot of people at some point, and they'll regret allowing every detail of their lives to scrutinized in such a way. After all, a former head of the Soviet secret police said "show me the man and I'll find you the crime", which is made oh so much easier when your entire life is cataloged and filed and ready to be mis-characterized and used against you... and it only takes a change of political leadership to lead to mass witch-hunts against the now demonized segment of the population. (imagine either Hillary Clinton or Trump deciding to persecute X group, and directing the .fedgov to go after said now unpopular people...). Having your entire life neatly cataloged and filed away makes that task oh so easy.

I've gotten into the habit of feeding the surveilance beast inaccurate information; if you can't stop the information gathering, just corrupt it enough so that it isn't so useful. Develop online hobbies and interests that are odd, weird, just to mess with them. :)
 
I started, so I thought I should finish this thread.

A few weeks ago I did buy an Amazon Echo Show and it's worked out very well. It was mainly for my wife, something to help her to connect a little bit. It simply helps a lot when she can just ask it 'what day is it?' I was really surprised at how good it sounds (it was surprisingly heavy), and it works well for playing music, and sleep sounds; playing videos off of Amazon Prime. The speech recognition and acuity of the microphones is phenomenal. Also really easy to make phone calls with it. We're only beginning to explore the applications and use the reminders. I am absolutely going to add a bunch of Echo Dots for other rooms, especially for the intercom ability, so my wife can call me when needed.

I figure if someone wants to listen in on my house, the best revenge is to let them go ahead. They'll be bored to death pretty quickly.
 
PiHole. Get a cheap unused Raspberry Pi and load it up with PiHole. It does DNS based blocking for your entire network so it doesn't matter what device you're on, you're getting the centralized ad-blocking. And some devices that like to call home can be blocked too. That's how I keep my smart TV from trying to be too smart for it's own good.
 
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