The Google Home Hub will Put Assistant up Against Amazon’s Echo Show

Google has just announced the Home Hub at its fall hardware event — a new Google Assistant device that looks like it’ll compete with products like Amazon’s Echo Show and the newly announced Facebook Portal by adding a screen to its existing Google Home device lineup, as revealed in an accidentally posted event recap video.

According to Google, the goal with the Home Hub is to create “a more helpful, thoughtful home,” with the added dimension of being able to see responses from Assistant, instead of just hearing them. Google has revamped services like Search, YouTube, Maps, Calendar, and Photos for Home Hub, to add both voice controls and glanceable information.

Interestingly, unlike Amazon’s Echo Show or the Facebook Portal, there doesn’t seem to be a camera on the Home Hub, meaning that you won’t be able to use it to video chat with friends over, say, Google Hangouts — but it also means that you won’t have the same privacy concerns that people tend to worry about with the all-seeing eyes of the Echo Show or Facebook Portal.

Hub also has a new feature called Home View, a one-stop dashboard for controlling and managing all the smart home devices in your home. It’s similar to the dashboard that Apple provides with its own Home app, and like Apple’s solution, you’ll be able to access Home View using the updated Google Home app to control your smart home gadgets on the go