News - 20180424 - Google says it sold a Google Home device every second

Google today announced that it sold “tens of millions of Google devices for the home” over the course of the last year and that it sold “more than one Google Home device every second since Google Home Mini started shipping in October.”

With roughly 6.75 million seconds since October 19 (the day the Home Mini officially went on sale), chances are that we’re talking close to 7.5 million Google Homes.

Google went all-in on its Google Assistant and its various Google Home devices in 2017. The launch of the Google Home Mini, which you could easily buy for $29 (and occasionally for $19 with store credit) gave the company a low-price competitor to Amazon’s Echo Dots, and even though it’s doubtful that Google made a lot of money of these sales, the move clearly paid off.

Sadly, Google isn’t saying what the sales breakdown between the Google Home Mini and the regular-sized version was, but it’s a safe bet that the company sold quite a few more of the lower-priced gadgets.

Google also today announced that its Assistant now runs on 400 million devices. This includes phones and watches, as well as devices from partners and even the iPhone. It’d be nice if we could compare Google’s numbers to Amazon’s, but Amazon is notoriously cagey about releasing any real sales numbers and instead opts for cute lists that are big on anecdotes and low on details.

Unsurprisingly, these large numbers also make the Google Assistant ecosystem more attractive to device manufacturers that want to integrate their services with the Assistant. For the most part, this means home automation services and hardware from the likes of Nest, Belkin, Samsung, Philips, and others. In total, there are now more than 1,500 smart home devices from more than 225 brands that support the Google Assistant.It’s probably a safe guess that Google isn’t randomly making today’s announcement ahead of CES, which is kicking off over the weekend. For the first time, Google is having a major presence on the show floor of the event and most of this seems to be centered around the Assistant and its partner ecosystem. There’s a good chance we’ll see more Assistant-enabled hardware in the next few days