Google has big plans for its connected home hardware, but its strategy has been two-pronged as of late, involving both Google Home and its Wi-Fi router. That may not be the case in the future, however, as it is purportedly looking to combine both of these into a single connected smart hub.
Such a combination would make for a Wi-Fi router with a smart, connected speaker that understands vocal commands. It would not only make it easier for Google to market its smart-home devices to customers with a singular product, but could help lead to the future it envisions, where customers have more than one such device in their home.
While we don’t have any hard announcement from Google detailing such a product, The Information (via Ars) cites a report that Google will make such a move to help it compete directly with Amazon’s burgeoning Alexa home hardware like the Echo and Echo Dot.
Currently Google Home and Google Wi-Fi are priced at $130 each, so presumably, any combination of the two would cost a little more than either of them alone, but would be cheaper than the cost of buying both.
Although Google Home and Google Wi-Fi have proven to be popular products, despite increasing competition from other big name manufacturers, Google has had to contend with some adversity in recent months. With the launch of the Beauty and the Beast movie, a suspected ad appeared during one user’s daily update from their Google Home. While Google denied it, the user base was not happy with the idea.
Google will, however, need to find some way to monetize vocal assistants in the coming years if more and more people do their searching through platforms like Google Home, rather than through the traditional Google search engine.
