Alexa is still in the lead when it comes to third-party service support on a voice assistant platform, but Google is catching up.
Google recently introduced a searchable web directory for its Actions on Google platform, which lets third parties plug into Google Assistant speakers like the Google Home. So we scraped the whole thing, threw it into a Google Sheet, and found that Google Assistant now has 1,830 different actions, plus thousands of podcasts and recipe sources.
Still Catching Up
Now, that's still not up to Amazon Alexa's standards. We found 5,201 Alexa skills that are rated four stars and higher, and more than 26,000 skills total in Amazon's online directory. That includes more than 6,000 games and more than 3,000 news sources.
But there are enough Google Actions to make them worth knowing. That includes, most notably, 196 different smart home skills to help you control products from Alarm.com to Zoma.
These Google Actions will work on Google Home devices, such as the Google Home, Google Home Mini, and Google Home Max; third-party Google Assistant speakers like the JBL Link 300; and any phone that has Google Assistant built in, or the Google Assistant app downloaded. These actions add to the built-in features of your Google Home or Assistant.
The basic music services and Google searches aren't in this list, although we noticed that Google has slipped in a lot of Google-based information Actions, possibly to bulk it up a bit. We left them in the list below, because maybe you wouldn't have thought of asking Google about them.
Activating Actions
To activate a third-party action, you summon your Assistant by saying, "Hey Google," (for a speaker) or, "OK Google," (on a phone), and then say, "Talk to ____." So for instance, if you want to get bus schedules in New York City, you'd say, "OK Google, talk to New York Bus." The Action then takes over and talks you through whatever its function is.
Recipes are a real Google strength. The system grabs recipe results from thousands of sources, and has a Sous Chef Action to help you step through your own recipes. There's also a ton of quizzes and kids' educational games.
Google is still really behind when it comes to travel-related skills, and it has no screen-based devices yet (they're coming later this year), so there aren't as many video skills. And while Google has transit status skills for Chicago, DC, New York, and London, and the ability to call an Uber, Alexa has many more cities, and also Lyft.
Take a look at the spreadsheet below to step through all of Google's Actions, or click over to Google's online searchable guide. (It looks a lot better than our spreadsheet, but it's more of a pain to page through.) We've put general actions, podcasts, and recipes on different tabs on the sheet below. You can also open our list in Google Sheets for a fuller view. And if you're still not sure which voice assistant is right for you, check out our head-to-head on the Amazon Echo vs. Google Home.