The number of syllables isn't the problem, it's that prefixing every request with "OK," feels extremely unnatural -- almost like you're treating the Google assistant in a sardonic or sarcastic manner.

(Also, "OK" is a very unnatural prefix! Notice how you accidentally replaced it with "hey". I watched a 7 year repeatedly do this a couple of days ago with Google Home, concluding it was broken. Compare w/ Alexa, which kids pick up on instantly.)

Edit: OK, not accidental, apparently "hey" is supposed to work too. Not sure why it wasn't working at my in-laws house! I think "hey" is a better prefix word than "OK" (though still not nearly as nice as no prefix [try always addressing your friends by putting "hey" in front of their name and see how it goes]), so I reduce my criticism by half. :-)

I disagree. Ok Google comes extremely naturally to most people I know. I prefer Google’s personification of an assistant - it’s the brand itself. Not some Alexa or Siri or some gender specific role.

Google has taken an absolute brilliant approach towards voice and their popularity shows. It’s a pleasure to use compared to anything else.

It is better than the echo but it was smart of both Apple and Amazon to call their assistant by a human name. Google is punishing themselves by making their product a function of saying 'Hey [massive global corporation susceptible to PR emergencies], unlock my front door'

>>Ok Google comes extremely naturally to most people I know.

And it sounds incredibly stupid to anyone else within earshot. I can’t get over how dumb my roommate sounds whenever he uses the thing. My immediate thought when I hear him say “OK Google” is that Google must have told him something and he is responding with “OK” to acknowledge. You know, the way people actually communicate.

I get that it becomes natural after a while but so what? Why start with such an unnatural way to activate it in the first place? Why not “Hey Google”? (I know it is supported in google home)

Not sure what English speaking country, or even US region, you come from but “OK [name], [call to action, often one involving both speaker and listener]” is a thing. And it doesn’t have to be a response to something said previously.

Remember, people can do whatever they want with their language, and it becomes a thing even if you personally aren’t familiar with it.

Exactly, when used that way it involves both the speaker and the listener, as in “OK Bob, let’s go to the park”.

Or, if it is used to pretend a command, it is used as a continuation of an existing conversation, like when you are at the doctor and he or she says “Go ahead and get on the scale” and then “OK, now sit here and open your mouth.”

The way google uses it is definitely not natural.

There is also the pause, after you say “Ok google” and it activates search for you.

Anyway, fanboys will continue to downvote I know but the whole interaction is undoubtedly awkward as fuck.

native speaker of english from USA here. starting a conversation or question with 'ok' is incredibly rare and sounds painfully awkward.

AFAIK, 'Hey Google' as a hotword was supported on the Google Home from the beginning.

It's what I started with and didn't even realize okay google was also valid. I wish they'd just let us designate our own, or at least give more choices.

This is what I've wondered. Why not let us designate our own??? Or provide a number of choices. It seems only natural that one day users will be able to name their assistant.

We'll look back at fixed naming and wonder who ever thought that made sense.

If I want my assistant to be named Jarvis, it puzzles me why I can't do that. It would also simplify the case where multiple devices are in the room (e.g. not having to yell towards the specific target device and hope the others ones don't hear.)

Something so simple will deeply personalize the experience for many users.

Personalization would require training the network to recognize your hot word, which needs to work in all sound environments, and detect hot word spoken by different people. That network also needs to be optimized to be small enough to be run constantly by a low-powered CPU in standby mode.

I am not saying that it is not doable, it's just there are real engineering tradeoffs present here.

Yep, most people don't realize that:

1. Hotword detection runs on a minimal low powered local subsystem

2. The two provided hotwords run networks that have been trained on millions of samples in thousands of different environments.

That thing is very heavily optimized. Alexa and Bixbi get far more false positives and false negatives.

This. The Google home gets far less false positives and why the wake word makes far more sense. You also do not then get accidently recorded like with the Echo.

Never thought about that, but makes perfect sense. Thanks for the explanation!!

Aha. Interesting. That makes sense. Well, that's good to know. At least it means it's coming.

If it's primarily a technical challenge that raises the chances of this eventually becoming reality.

Personalisation would not give advertising of the company to any guests who witness you using the device ... that's my idea of the primary reason.

Interesting, someone else said that too. It definitely wasn't working for us though... Maybe something to do w/ whether or not it was trained to our voices?

In principle, training to your voice should only be necessary to get access to personal content and settings, but it probably also improves wakeword recognition (and the training trains with both wakewords.)

But that's still pretty terrible, they now have to support both 'OK Google' and 'Hey Google' and 'XXX Google' for all other countries.

There are quite a few people out there who don't speak English. Okay is a common word in many languages since WWII I guess. In many languages there isn't a aspirated H.

It's not accidental. That's the activation phrase.

> try always addressing your friends by putting "hey" in front of their name and see how it goes

My friends are better at contextually disregarding comments and don't send any utterance that seems to invoke them to a remote server, so don't need a form of address designed to avoid false positives.

Isn't it 'Okay Google'? Either way, I do find Alexa rolls off the tongue a little easier. That may be because I have trouble enunciating verbal transitions.

It's both. It comes down to the keyword identification algorithm of course, not the design by Google. Google's decision choice was not picking a random name that can be identified but instead working in their brand name. My bet is that give it a few years and we will have custom activation words within some constraints.

Is it both? The Google Home I was playing with at my in-laws house a couple days ago definitely only seemed to respond to "OK" (people kept forgetting and using "hey", which didn't work).

Works for me, though I've trained my voice on it, so perhaps that helps. I'm 100% it's supposed to be both.

When you're setting up the Home during the training step it makes you say "Hey Google" and "Okay Google". It's definitely a bit hard to notice considering only a single word changes.

Also the same number as "Hey, Siri". And Samsung's "Hey, Bixby". I'm assuming it's not a coincidence.

I think it's likely that three syllables just happens to be a nice cut-off point that minimizes the number of spurious activations, and that explains why everybody doing voice control uses that particular threshold to activate their digital assistant.

Heck, even Star Trek got it right way back in 1966 with its "Computer" wake word.

About the only company I can find that seems to be ignoring the three-syllable rule is Microsoft, who use "Hey, Cortana", which is four syllables. But Microsoft's always been a fan of using really long phrases to identify their products, so maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

Just be glad that VMware don't make one.

"Hey, VMware vSphere Home Voice Assistant Essentials Plus..."