Google's most ambitious new product isn't its fancy new phone

It's a big week for Google.

The search giant unveiled a slew of new products: a phone, a virtual reality headset, updates to its Chromecast line of products, a new type of wireless router. There was even a big to-do event with press invited to Google's Mountain View, California campus. 

While the new phone - the Pixel - is nice, and the new VR headset - Daydream View - is a look to the future, Google's most ambitious new product announced on Tuesday was actually a small speaker with a bizarre, slanted top.

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Darren Weaver

It's called Google Home, and it's an in-home personal assistant/multidirectional speaker. You speak - "Okay, Google" - and it listens. "How do I get from here to Roosevelt Island on the subway?" Google Home has an answer, using Google Maps and up-to-date MTA route information pulled from Google, and it's going to tell me.

And all I had to do was ask.

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Like Amazon's Echo, it's meant to serve a role previously occupied only by fictional AI characters: to perform casual tasks by voice alone. But Google Home has some fascinating new additions to the concept, and a price point $50 below the Echo.

Here's everything we know about Google Home thus far: