Google Arrives At CES To Battle Alexa and Siri

More than 3,900 companies are on hand to show off their latest technologies at CES this week, but there’s one giant name that stands out from the pack: Google.

According to The Washington Post, this is the first time in several years that the Mountain View, Calif. titan has had a big, stand-alone booth at the show and its presence not only reflects the changing dynamic of the show, but also serves as a declaration of war on the battlefield of digital assistants.

CES is changing from a show where you show up with the flashiest gadget. Now there's a greater focus on creating partnerships between small and large companies to make each product work within constellation of others to help people get through the day more efficiently, said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, which hosts CES. Tech giants want their assistants to be the glue of that life operating system — the voice that helps you turn on your lights, power your car’s dashboard and control everything from your shower head to your bed.

Having an official booth at CES, especially when its chief rival Amazon doesn't, lets Google show off to potential buyers and signal that it's ready to work with the world's top brands and interesting start-ups, analysts said.

The competition to be the first assistant to get into people's homes is fierce. It's a market that's expected to grow considerably within the next few years, with the analysis firm Gartner predicting that a quarter of all household requests will be made through voice assistants by 2019. Currently, Amazon’s Echo devices have 67 percent of the smart speaker market, to Google's 25 percent according to Strategy Analytics. And both Google and Amazon offered drastic holiday price cuts to get ahead of Apple’s HomePod. That speaker, expected later this year, will give Apple's Siri voice assistant its own perch in the home — though the company's HomeKit software already lets Siri control lightbulbs, smart locks and other products, including some exhibiting at the show.