The Google Assistant and Alexa have long been at odds, and back in the voice assistants’ heydays, speaker-makers seemingly weren’t allowed to ship both platforms in one product. Later around 2019, the two companies finally deigned to be on the same device—but never active at the same time. Notably on Sonos speakers, customers could swap between the two assistants via an app setting. Times are getting tough for voice assistants, though, and now via a new toolkit, Amazon and Google can finally work at the same time on a single speaker. One of the first to support the new toolkit is JBL, via the new JBL Authentics 200, 300, and 500 speakers.
The toolkit is called the “Multi-Agent Experience (MAX) Toolkit,”and we have dueling press releases from Google and Amazon promoting the new speaker. Amazon says the two voice assistants can even work together and handoff tasks, saying “customers no longer need to remember which service they asked to start a request for music, timers, reminders, or alarms—either service can stop it. For example, customers can ask Alexa to set a timer and ask Google Assistant to stop it when it goes off, or vice versa.”
Despite the two systems finally working together, I’m not sure now is a great time to be investing in either system. Revenue streams for the Google Assistant and Alexa never materialized, so the two systems aren’t any good at making money, and it sounds like the initial roadmaps for both products have run out. Both products are reportedly scheduled for a generative AI reboot at some point in the future, with the hopes that it will somehow solve their revenue problems. That means the current standards for hardware, capabilities, and usefulness of these assistants are all up in the air. There’s no telling how the impending reboots will disrupt existing, older hardware, so we’re considering these a risky purchase right now.
If you want to take your chances, the new speakers launch September 15 in Europe and September 17 in North America.