Paul’s Tech Makeover: Google Ekes Out an Audio Win (Premium)

Our move to Pennsylvania over two and a half years ago was, among other things, an opportunity for us to start thinking about transitioning not just to a new home but to a new kind of home, one that would provide smart home functionality.

This was always going to be a slow process, and for a number of reasons, chief among them that the smart home market is still, today, evolving, and because I want to be cognizant of the fact that more technology isn’t always better. My wife isn’t a huge fan of many smart home gadgets, and we also do an annual (usually three weeks long) home swap, and I don’t want anyone coming here to worry about hidden cameras and other kinds of surveillance.

As I noted way back in January, our embrace of smart home technology has been modest at best. We’ve completely dropped cable TV and now only rely on services like Netflix, Hulu, and the like. We have numerous Philips Hue smart lights in and outside of the house, and that usage actually did expand in 2019. We use Google Wi-Fi for mesh wireless networking around this large house, and it has been incredibly reliable and worry-free. I spent a good chunk of the first half of 2019 digitizing my entire paper photo collection, and while there is still some organization to finish up, that work is largely done.

And then there’s Google Home and Google Assistant.

We’ve had several of these devices—two Google Homes and two Google Home Minis—spread around the home for a while now, and we added a Lenovo Smart Display to the kitchen in 2018 and then a Lenovo Smart Clock to the master bedroom in 2019. We also use Chromecast Audio connected to a pair of studio monitor speakers in the sunroom and this $129 combination outperforms a pair of Sonos One Speaker that cost almost $400.

The Chromecast works wonderfully. But as far as Google Home and ambient computing are concerned, we pretty much ran into a wall in 2019, and I assume this is pretty common with others as well, no matter which digital personal assistant you’ve settled on: We just don’t use it very much.

To be clear, I still feel like ambient computing is the next big computing wave. But as has been the case with so many of my predictions about the future, the transition from here to there is taking far longer than I expected. And this despite incredible advances, both with Google Assistant and with its competitors.

But our interactions with Google Assistant, generally through Google Home devices, but sometimes via our phones as well, has been sporadic. “Hey Google, what’s the weather?” “Hey Google, tell me the news.” That kind of thing. We do “use” the smart display in the sense that it’s just sitting there displaying an ever-evolving photo slideshow of family and friends; and I like that I can say “Hey Google, share that photo” when I see a picture I want to send to my wife or a friend. But that’s about it.

Part of the problem with this whole thing is just the tediousness of having to say “Hey Google,” or “OK Google,” both of which are semi-tongue-twisting necessities. And while I worry about a future in which Google is simply just listening to everything, processing it, and jumping in when it feels like I’m explicitly addressing it or perhaps just need help, that is clearly the future of this and other digital personal assistant platforms. Today, not so much.

But I also introduce my own problems, partly because of what I do for work and partly because I’m just broken this way inside: I lean very easily towards self-doubt, and I’m always reconsidering decisions, and, in this case specifically, wondering if Google is really the right choice here. Amazon’s recent tsunami of new Alexa-powered devices—it’s second or third year in a row of doing that—was a real gut-check moment. It just seems like that firm is a lot more serious about succeeding in this market than is Google. Did I make the right choice? What would it look like if I switched? What would I need to buy, and what could I still keep using, and so on.

And then Google very quietly enabled a feature in its Google Home platform that I’ve wanted for years. And in doing so, it made these Google Home and Google Home Mini devices I previously purchased or otherwise acquired all the more interesting. And it’s just the simplest thing in the world. You can now stereo pair them.

I know. It sounds crazy, but until very recently, Google only supported stereo pairing with the expensive Google Home Max, which I tried at launch and the immediately returned because, again, my own speakers sound so much better and are so much less expensive. But now you can stereo pair two Google Homes and/or two Google Home Minis. And I happen to have two of each.

This has allowed me to create an even simpler whole-house audio system, and it sounds surprisingly great. I moved a Google Home from the sunroom into the kitchen, creating a stereo pair there. And then I moved a second Google Home Mini that I wasn’t even using into the living room and put it on the low cabinet with the smart TV and the other Mini, creating a second stereo pair there. Then I added both pairs to my “Thurrott All” group in the Google Home app.

It sounds great. It works great. And I may even buy two more minis for the dining room to complete the setup. (I previously had another pair of speakers there with a Chromecast Audio, but they failed and I had to toss them out.) It’s just such a cheap and effective solution.

Because I use Google Play Music for music, and because Chromecast/Google Cast works so well, music was one of my big stumbling blocks in any potential move to Amazon. But now that Google enabled stereo pairing, I’m far less likely to worry about switching again. Well, at least until the next Alexa announcement tsunami, I guess.

Sometimes it really is the little things.