Category: Google Assistant

Actions for Google Assistant continue to be added at a pretty fast clip and most of them we don’t hear much about.  They just show up in the Assistant app on your phone and then you can use them there or on your Google Home.  However, every once in a while, Google highlights a new Action like that have with Tasty.

Tasty.co is a fantastic recipe site that gives you step-by-step instructions and videos to cook just about anything.  Now it is even easier by simply asking your Google Home to talk to Tasty.

A few weeks ago Spanish support for Google Assistant was added in what at the time looked like a precursor to Google Home being available in the country.  Today that has proven to be the case.  Now on the Spanish Google Store site, you can order a Google Home for €149 (roughly $172) and a Google Home Mini for €59 (roughly $68).

While Spain was expected due to the the Assistant support, the fact that Austria and Ireland also now has Home available came as a bit of a surprise.  Google had not previously announced these two countries, but given the rate of expansion that the Mountain View company has aimed for in 2018 both with Assistant and Home, it isn’t too big of a surprise.

Google Assistant has a nice update rolling out to it that allows for you to give it three commands at once when interacting on your Google Home.  The change falls in line with some of the announcements at Google I/O last month, including requiring less verbiage to make things happen.

A few weeks back, the ability to give Google Assistant two commands rolled out but it still required a lot of words to make happen.  For example, you could say, “Hey Google, turn on my office lamp and turn on the kitchen lights” and it would do so.  Now, however, you can cut that phrasing down to “Hey Google, turn on my office lamp and the kitchen lights”.

A small, quiet update has rolled out to Google Assistant that allows you to set your default language in three Spanish dialects.  The update, which is a cloud-side update, allows for users to set España, México, and EE.UU as their default language.

The addition of these different dialects almost assuredly means that expansion of Google Home into Mexico and Spain is just around the corner as that has been Google’s pattern in previous Google Home and Google Assistant expansions this year.

In what could prove to be the clearest sign yet that the personal assistant race is coming down to two horses, Microsoft appears to be set to allow both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant on the Xbox One.  The news, along with a supporting screenshot, came from the team over at Windows Central and points to users having the option to leverage the personal assistant of their choice on their Xbox One for controlling the device from their phone.

The news of this falls in line with other news that Microsoft is fundamentally shifting Cortana, their digital assistant, away from the consumer market and more toward the productivity side of things and not necessarily a personal assistant.  It appears that Microsoft is conceding to Alexa and Google Assistant.

After a trickle rollout last week, Google appears to be more broadly rolling out a new Purchases and Reservations section within Google Assistant on Android.  This, like many changes with Assistant, is a cloud-side update so as long as you have the latest version of the Google app and/or Assistant app, you should be good-to-go.

The new sections are accessed by long pressing your Home button to activate Google Assistant.  Now tap on the blue Explore button in the upper right corner.  Finally, tap on the overflow menu (three vertical dots) and go to Settings.  If it has rolled out to your account, you will see the new Purchases and Reservations sections.