Cheaper and better, what's not to love?

Google started out as a search engine, so nobody ever expected it to be directly competing with Amazon, an online retailer, in the smart home market.

Amazon and Google think that artificially intelligent assistants like Alexa+ and Gemini will speed up the process of setting up a smart home, but many problems remain unsolved.

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Smart home ecosystems like Google Home and Amazon Alexa were supposed to herald a "Jetsons" style future when they arrived in the mid-2010s. Complete with voice assistants that allowed users to ...