The Google Assistant you access via the Home is the same as the one on recent Android phones such as the Google Pixel 4. The Google Home can play music, but it's primarily designed as a vehicle for Google Assistant - Google's voice-activated virtual helper that's connected to the internet. The smart speaker from the eponymous search giant was designed to compete with the popular Amazon Echo. CNET has created a guide to buying the right smart speaker for you, and here's a breakdown of the three main digital assistants built in to smart speakers - Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. If you're not sure whether you want a Google Home, an Amazon Echo or perhaps an Apple HomePod, I can help with that, too. I'll also look at the flaws of the system and what's next for the Google Nest smart home. Below, I'll familiarize you with the basics of Google Home, then dive into everything you can do once you're up and running.
Maybe you've already made your decision and bought one of Google's smart speakers or smart displays and now you want to know what you should do with it. Do you want one with Google Assistant or with Amazon's competitive voice assistant, Alexa? Should you buy one now or wait until Google's next mysterious speaker launches? Perhaps you're wondering if you need a smart speaker like the Google Nest Mini, a smart display like the Nest Hub, both or neither. Click the “Select all conversations in Chats” link to select every single chat log stored in your Google account.Welcome to CNET's guide to the Google Home smart speaker and Google's growing lineup of smart home gadgets. While viewing your chat logs, click the checkbox at the top-left corner of the chat log list to select all the chat logs in the current view. If you don’t want to store your entire chat history forever, it’s easy to clear. For example, you can search for “in:chats bicycle” to search for all the times you mentioned the word “bicycle” in a Google Talk or Hangouts conversation. The “In:chats” term searches chat logs only, omitting emails. To search your chat history, use the search box at the top of the page. The counter at the top-right corner of the messages list will give you some idea of how many chat logs you’re storing in your account. You can click through your chat logs and read them. You’ll see chat logs from both the older Google Talk and the newer Google Hangouts here. On the Gmail website, click the “More” option in the left sidebar.Ĭlick “Chats” to view all the chat logs Gmail is storing in your Google account.
RELATED: Why You Should Delete Emails Instead of Archiving Them How to Find Google Talk and Hangouts Chat Logs in GmailĬhat logs are easy to find. However, it was enabled by default, and most people didn’t disable it. That’s another reason you might want to wipe it, just like you might want to delete old and unnecessary emails.Ĭhat history wasn’t mandatory-at the time, you could disable Google Talk’s chat history feature. Your chat history also takes up storage space, just like the emails you store in Gmail.
Do you really want to keep all those old conversations forever, indexed alongside your emails? If so, great. If you wanted to keep your chat history, that’s great.īut-if you started using Google Talk in 2005, that means that chat logs from more than 15 years ago are stored in your Gmail account. Gmail’s search function searches both your chat logs and your emails. Even though Google Talk is long gone, your chat logs from that discontinued service are stored in your Gmail account. By default, Google remembers your conversation histories.