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Over the past few weeks, over 30 new actions have been added to Google Assistant, giving Google Home up to 118 total actions to date. While only a fraction of Amazon’s Alexa, the rate of growth is certainly encouraging.
So, What’s New And Useful?
There are a few new actions that are actually really useful. Things like a slang dictionary and beer guide are in the mix, but those are more fun than function.
There are a few that look very, very helpful and we’d like to highlight them quickly.
Baby Stats – If you’ve had kids, have kids, or are thinking about having kids any time soon, this action will come in very useful. I have to kids, both past the baby stage, but I imagine how great this would have been to have around.
Babies need to be monitored all the time. When did they pee, poop, eat or get a diaper change? We had to jot that stuff on paper and keep up with it all in an analog way. This would be great! It works with the site baby-stats.com and presumably needs an account there.
Weather Sky – Asking about the day’s weather is passé these days. Any number of services offer it and whether you use an app, site or extension, they are all pretty similar in their results.
Weather Sky is a novel take on daily weather. You can ask Weather Sky (“OK Google, talk to Weather Sky…”) what the weather was on any day in any location.
Want to remember what the weather was in Florida last year during your vacation? Just ask.
How about your wedding day? Again, Weather Sky can fetch that info for you.
While not a thing you need every single day, I love the ability to remember what the weather was like on key days in the past for any location I was. This one is incredibly useful.
Other Mentions – More and more public transit schedules, art repositories and fun actions like FML are being added constantly. For a quick (or not so quick as the days move forward and more actions are added) look at everything you can do, just open up the Google Home app, menu, more settings, and select Services. From there, you can see the growing list of all the things Google Home and Assistant are becoming capable of.
With the full roll out of Assistant hitting millions of Android devices (and Chromebooks, soon??) last week, Assistant – and Google Home, by extension – looks to only be getting more and more equipped.
Last year at this time, Alexa had only 100 or so skills. Now it has 10,000. I assume Google Home’s growth will be similar.
