The Tribune

GOOGLE wants to play an even bigger role in managing people’s daily lives while also nudging them into an alternate reality, as the Internet company responds to competitive threats posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com’s trendy smart-home speaker.

Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality (VR) with a system called Daydream that is meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus’ early lead in fabricating artificial worlds.

In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device.

Instant Apps is Google’s answer to the pain of installing phone apps you know you will use just once or twice, for shopping or booking a parking spot, for example. With this approach, the app runs on Google’s servers instead of your phone. Only the parts you need are sent to your phone on an as-needed basis.

There will also be a new chat service called Allo that is designed to counter Facebook’s Messenger app and WhatsApp.

Allo will draw upon a vast database that Google has built through its dominant Internet search engine to predict how you might want to respond to a text and automatically fetch links to video clips and other information that seem relevant to an ongoing conversation.

Although the new products will offer some unique features, they mostly paint a picture of a company scrambling to catch up with its rivals.

Google Home, for instance, will mostly do the same things already performed by the Echo, a cylinder-like speaker that Amazon released last year.

The Echo responds to voice commands to play music, read books, answer questions and manage calendars. It also turns off the lights, hails Uber rides and keeps adding new tasks as programmers build more apps for it.

Not surprisingly, Google touts its Home speaker as a more intelligent and versatile device, mostly because it can tap into the same stockpile of information that makes Google’s Internet search place so popular. Google also has redesigned its virtual assistant to be more conversational and intuitive. It will be the voice and brains inside Google Home.

Although it is meant to be more personal than the automated voice that Google currently uses to respond to spoken requests on smartphones and computers, the company is simply calling it “Assistant”, unlike the human names given to other virtual assistants from Amazon (Alexa), Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana).

Google has not revealed a price for the Home device, though presumably it will be competitive with the Echo, which sells for $180.

Daydream is a new virtual reality ecosystem that will be made available to all. Google will sell a virtual-reality headset with a wireless motion controller expected to carry the Nexus brand that the company originally created as a showcase for its Android operating system for smartphones. No details of price or availability have been announced.

Consumers will need a new smartphone to power the headset, tethered to the “N’’ version of Android that Google plans to release later this year and requires more processing power and sensors unavailable in any phone already out.

Google’s new VR headset will not be as sophisticated as the recently-released Rift from Oculus, which costs $600 and must be tethered to computers that can cost another $1,000 or so.

Oculus spent several years perfecting the Rift, which features technology that looks so revolutionary that Facebook paid $2 billion to buy the startup in 2014.

Associated Press