At CES 2020 Google Doubles Down On Getting Its Software All Around You
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A sign of the times at CES 2020.
James Martin/CNET
[/ces/ This story is part of CES 2020, our complete coverage of the showroom floor and the hottest new tech gadgets around.][/google/ Google] is everywhere at [ CES 2020]. With the world's largest consumer electronics showcase under way here in Las Vegas, the search giant has dispatched an army of people clad in white uniforms to spread the gospel about the [/tags/google-assistant/ Google Assistant], the company's digital concierge software. The company built a massive fun house with slides and a ball pit. The words "Hey Google," the wake phrase for the software, are plastered all over buildings and the monorail in Las Vegas, the tech show's host city.
It's a classic corporate marketing blitz, but it's also an apt metaphor for Google's grand ambition: to get its software all around you -- to fill up every inch of your life, from your commute to work to your Saturday morning vacuuming the house. (That means getting Google's tech into the home with its smart speakers, as well as the vacuum itself.)
To go with the publicity bonanza -- which has [ ] for the past two years -- Google made several announcements Tuesday aimed at doubling down on the company's vision of "ambient computing." That's Google's buzz phrase for an always-on, always-connected future where you're not only using the company's services when you turn to its search engine to find a movie's runtime, but also when you want to microwave some popcorn to go with the film.
The centerpiece of that master plan is the Assistant. To show the company's progress, Google for the first time revealed user numbers for the service: [ ]. Scott Huffman, vice president of engineering for the Assistant, said the product still has a long way to go, but the stat is meaningful. "It means that, in this space of having a human conversation [with AI software], we're onto something," he said in an interview. "We've tapped into something that is getting good enough that people are choosing to use it over the other ways to do things."
