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   I will put related info here.
   
   GOOG, they will still make buggy whips.
   
   Obsolete?
   
   
   Google Home Show rumours: Is Google planning a touchscreen smart speaker?
   Google could be prepping a rival to the Amazon Echo Show. Read the latest rumours on a touchscreen Google Home.
   
   By Marie Black | 12 Dec 2017
   
   
   
   
   Google might have the better device, but Amazon's Echo smart speaker family leads the market. While Google has recently announced its Google Home Mini and Google Home Max(the latter available only in the US for now), Amazon still has more devices. One of which is the Echo Show, a smart speaker with a touchscreen display, and it's the one Google could well have its eyes on next.
   
   It makes sense that if Google wants to take on Amazon Echo head to head it needs to have fingers in all the same pies, and therefore that it would look to produce an Echo Show-style version of Google Home.
   
   There's very little evidence to go on here, however, which suggests the company is still in the early planning stages.
   
   Trusted Reviews.
   
   “In this role, you’ll work on the next generation of Google Hardware to enable the best multi-touch user experience. You will lead the touch module development and integration for Google Hardware from concept to mass production,” states the job description.
   
   The eventual hire will “work to define complete touch solutions” and make “our user’s interaction with computing faster, more powerful, and seamless”, it continues.
   
   
   Come on GOOG, get hands free, "ambient computing". By the time you get this done it will be a buggy whip....
   S Johnson says they use what they have on the bench. A lot of touch screen stuff on various benches, but GOOG had better do BETTER than this or they will get their butt kicked. You have a sensor hub in your Pixel phones, make MORE use of it and make it always listening?
   
   Thanks in advance.
   

   jfieb, 14 minutes agoEditReport

   #1Reply
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   jfiebWell-Known Member

   New
   

   
   

   Here is just part of the trouble bewtween AMazon and Goog
   
   Dear Amazon and Google: Enough.
   There comes a time when companies need to put corporate greed aside and put their users' interests first. For Amazon and Google, that time is now.
   

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     Gang, we need to talk. Here in the land o' tech (no relation to the Land o' Lakes, aside from a shared love of butter), things are starting to get silly.
     
     Google and Amazon, if you haven't heard, are in the midst of a very public schoolyard spat. And their little game of corporate one-upmanship shows no sign of slowing anytime soon.
     
     Here's the 30-second version, in case you haven't been following along: For years, Amazon has refused to offer Google products like Chromecastand Google Home in its online store. It also neglected to offer a readily available Prime Video app for Android up until just a few months ago (previously, you had to go out of your way to sideload the entire notification-spam-spewing Amazon storefront app just to play a lousy movie). Oh, and it still doesn't provide a way to cast videos from Prime to Google-Cast-compatible devices, which is a real thorn in the side for its many Cast-using subscribers.
     
     A couple months ago, though, the tables turned: Amazon launched a voice control device with a screen, the Echo Show, and wanted to offer YouTube on it. Rather than working with Google on a custom version of the app, Amazon evidently came up with its own "hack" to make YouTube available. Google balked and blocked the device's access. Soon after, Amazon — completely coincidentally, of course — stopped selling all Nest products in its store.
     
     awkwardly formatted web version of the site from the device. Google again said "naw" and pulled the plug for YouTube on both the Echo Show and on Amazon's various Fire TV streaming devices.
     
     In a statement sent out widely to tech news publications last week, Google left little question about the driving reason for its retaliation:
     
     We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other's products and services. But Amazon doesn't carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn't make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest's latest products. Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV. We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.
     
     Amazon, for its part, told anyone who asked that Google was "setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website" and said it hoped to resolve the matter "as soon as possible" (by "duking it out at the tetherball pole after school," the company probably should have added).
     
     Computerworld's Facebook page. ]
     Look, I get it: Business is business, and to some extent, you have to look out for your own bottom line. But at a certain point, the most significant harm you're inflicting is upon your own users and their experiences with your products. At a certain point, you start to make Steve Jobs' infamous "thermonuclear war on Android" look like the work of a well-adjusted sane man. At a certain point, you become the corporate equivalent of a bratty little kid shouting at another 10-year-old on the playground.
     
     
     
     
     And here's the real rub: Given that both Amazon and Google create products that are primarily about services — and about getting users to embrace an ecosystem regardless of what type of hardware they own — locking down the gates just to make a point is not only petty but also ultimately self-defeating on both sides of the spectrum.
     
     To stick with the third-grade mentality at which the companies are currently operating, Amazon, by all counts, appears to be the one who, like, totally started it. Sources who are "familiar with Google's thinking on the matter" (but, you know, totally aren't Google PR reps who want to make a point without going on the record) tell Engadget that Amazon implementing its own "hack" to get YouTube working on the Echo Show and Fire TV — rather than working with Google to create fully featured versions of the apps designed specifically for those devices — was essentially the last straw.
     
     But, no big surprise, the frustration apparently dates back years — to when Amazon started its quiet policy against selling Google's products.
     
     We don't want to be caught in the middle of your self-serving little squabble

   
   So use this as a backdrop for ALexa and voice and IoT etc. ......
   
   We have been working with an IoT cloud guy, like these 2 or the China equivalents.