The Amazon Echo and Google Home are amazing devices and both have advantages over the other. In my home, we use the Amazon Echo and have them around the house and outside. I have the original in the living room, a Dot in bedrooms, my office and outside, a Tap in my woodworking workshop and Spots in the kids’ room (with tape over the camera). They’re great devices, but far from perfect. They’re missing several key features and the Google Home is missing the same things, too.
I polled the TechCrunch staff. The following are the features we would like to see in the next generation of these devices.
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Matt Burns
Chief Content Officer
Matt Burns is a longtime technology journalist, now Chief Content Officer at Insight Media Group and formerly Managing Editor at TechCrunch. At Insight Media Group, he guides coverage and editorial across fast-growing tech publications of The New Stack, Towards Data Science and Roadmap.sh. Before that, he spent 15+ years at TechCrunch, rising from contributor to Managing Editor, helping scale the newsroom and program Disrupt’s stages and TechCrunch’s other events. Earlier, he also wrote for Engadget. Matt co-founded the Resilience Conference, an event series at the intersection of defense, security, and startup innovation. Across roles, he’s reported on and moderated conversations in AI, mobility, frontier tech, and the hard problems technology companies face. He’s interviewed world leaders, top investors, startup founders, and public-company CEOs. Lifelong Michiganian with plenty of Silicon Valley miles, he brings Midwest empathy and an editor’s eye. Offstage, he works with teams to sharpen narrative and validate go-to-market plans, and, when possible, camping along Lake Michigan.
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