Amazon and Google want you to get a digital home assistant
This particular holiday season is also important for both Google and Amazon because it’s an opportunity to establish the product category; a chance to finally shed the novelty moniker that devices like the Echo have carried for the past three years, and to re-introduce them to consumers as must-haves.
“It’s reminiscent of the release of TiVo,” said Towns, referring to the digital video recorder from 1999 that let people record TV shows airing on different channels at the same time. “It was this great technology that was hard for people to get their head around. TiVo faced this challenge where it was hard to get people who hadn’t tried it to adopt it.”
The Echo and Google Home find themselves in a similar position, Towns said. Amazon and Google can advertise all they want, but people want to know that it’s something they can trust, she said. And one of the best ways to gain consumer trust is to...
