(2021-09-30) Perspective How Big Tech Monopoly Made Smart Speakers Dumber

Perspective | How Big Tech monopoly made smart speakers dumber. I recently moved into a new home. But before I can get settled, I have to install a tech monopoly. Is it an Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri home?

Their monopolistic mind-set makes your home more complicated, leaves you less choice and less privacy, and already resulted in less-capable smart speakers.

The Amazon, Google and Apple artificial intelligence assistants (Intelligent Software Assistant) inside smart speakers and phones are at once DJs and gateways for your future tech life. They not only enable you to command gadgets like a digital butler, but they also allow them to work together

These assistants also serve the tech giants that made them. They decide what information to provide you, where you can shop and how seriously to take your privacy

If I buy a Google Nest thermostat, I won’t be able to easily change the temperature with Siri. But if I buy a new low-price Amazon thermostat, I can’t operate it with Google.

Sonos today sells speakers that let you choose between Alexa and Google, but only one can operate at a time — you have to disable one before you can use the other. In the Concurrency demo, talking to both of them required nothing more than saying their names.

Google refused to let Sonos release the product

It’s not just Google putting up walls in our smart homes. Apple, which was a pioneer in voice AIs with Siri on the iPhone, only this summer announced a program that allows non-Apple devices to answer to “Hey, Siri.” But there’s a catch: The home also needs to have an Apple-made HomePod smart speaker in it.

Amazon dramatically undercuts competitors (including Sonos) on the price of its Echo speakers — sometimes selling them at a loss — because it can make money from them in other ways. Alexa pushes you to buy things from Amazon, including dozens of its own brand-connected products, from its new thermostat to a smart plug that only work with Alexa.

They have so much power, they can even change how our appliances work without our permission. We already know what this feels like: During the summer, Amazon remotely activated its Sidewalk network on millions of Alexa smart speakers and Ring cameras, sharing a slice of people’s Internet connections with neighbors and Amazon.

Industry organizations, like a group called Matter that all three tech giants have joined, can play a role. Matter is developing standards to help WiFi-based devices work better together.

By some point next year, Google says its newest Nest thermostats will be compatible with Matter. In theory, Apple’s Siri should use Matter, too

Right now, Matter isn’t even working on a standard for allowing more than one voice assistant on a smart speaker at the same time.