The recent rumors were true, as it turns out. At its developer conference today, Google has announced Home, a device that's basically its response to Amazon's highly successful Echo line of smart Bluetooth speakers. Like Amazon's offerings, Google Home will take voice commands from you, it will talk back to you, and it's also a speaker. So you can play some music on it if you want.
Physically, the Home is a small, approachable little cylinder with an angled top. The speaker bows out a little, and overall it's quite cute. Like Google's OnHub router (which, really, probably should have also had Google Home's capabilities if Google were smarter), it has a modular case that you can customize with different base shells to match your decor. It will also have some LED lights that dance around a bit to let you know it's working.
Another thing the Echo isn't great at, having more than one. But Google Home is designed with multiple rooms and speakers in mind from the start. And because it's using the basic Cast standard, you can talk to any speaker and tell it to play music on other speakers, just like you can with Google Cast Audio. It will work with Google Play Music, of course, but it should also be able to handle any other service that supports Google Cast, like Spotify.
Unfortunately Google Home is still a long way from launching. It will only be available sometime later this year, and pricing hasn't been announced yet.
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