Best Buy Black Friday deals offering Google Home for $99
- by Carmen Reese
- in Science
- — Nov 23, 2016
Just a few days ago, it was made known that Best Buy would sell the Google Home, Google's answer to Amazon's Echo, for just $99 during Black Friday.
Google Home is a voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant, like the Echo's Alexa or Apple's Siri. The Google Assistant handles a lot of complicated queries, being able to deliver translations, weather information or set up routes on Google Maps. This platform is now also available for use on the Google Pixel and Pixel XL alongside the rather controversial messaging app Allo.
Seeing a discount on the Google Home is quite surprising, actually.
Similar to other carriers and manufacturers in Canada, Google will be hosting special workshops on each of its products and services, with the option to book 1:1 appointments with "Google Guides" for tech help.
In a North American first, Best Buy stores in four Canadian cities, including the downtown Vancouver location (798 Granville Street), are now home to large-scale (670-square-foot) Google shops, where consumers can purchase or test-drive the company's products like the new Pixel phone, the Daydream View virtual headset and Chromecast Ultra video streaming device.
According to PhoneArena, this is a very good deal, as the Amazon Echo is $179.
On the market for a connected speaker?
Despite this sale being promoted through the Google Store, I'd venture to guess that the $99 price point will be valid elsewhere, too.
Visitors can meander the modular store-within-a-store, typing on Chromebook laptops, browsing the Web on Pixel smartphones, and chatting with the Google Home smart speaker. Google says this price will remain active for "a limited time", but it's likely the sale will end sometime next week after Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
