INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Google Home has learned Spanish
Google announced this morning that its smart speakers are now able to listen and respond to users& voice commands in Spanish
The update may help the speakers gain more ground against Amazon Alexa-powered Echo devices, not only in the U.S
where a number of people today speak Spanish as their native language, but also in other international markets.
Related to this, Google says
its Google Home products, including the Home, Home Mini and Max, are available in Spanish in Mexico and Spain.
Though today Amazon Alexa
devices have the most market share in the U.S., Google may have found Amazon Achilles heel by targeting language support to grow its own
While Amazon supports English, German and more recently, Japanese, Google has promised its smart assistant will support over 30 languages by
year-end.
Those languages & or at least some of them & should roll out over time to Google Home speakers, too, as Google targets new markets
with its smart devices.
Today, however, Google mobile Assistant speaks more languages than its speakers, which currently support English,
French, German, Italian, and Japanese, according to Google website, in addition to now, Spanish.
Google also said its Assistant will become
multilingual, meaning users will be able to switch between two languages without having to change the settings
This support will initially be available in English, French and German, but it makes sense that Spanish would be a priority here, as well,
though Google didn&t say today if that would be the case
(And presumably, the longer-term goal is to also make its smart devices, not just its mobile Assistant, capable of multilingual capabilities
across languages.)
To change a Google Home language to Spanish, you&ll need to launch the Google Home app, select Preferences, then visit
the Settings menu.
With Spanish enabled, you can ask Google Home about your day (&Ok Google, ¿cómo será mi día&), the World Cup (&Ok
Google, ¿cuándo juega México&), listen to top songs (&Ok Google, reproducir mi lista de reproducción para hacer ejercicio&), adjust your
thermostat (&Ok Google, sube la temperatura del termostato&) and more, as you can in other languages.
