Surprisingly Google has not exposed APIs to let programmers go wild with their new Google Home speaker. They have built a number of feature as shown here https://madeby.google.com/home/features/#?filters=entertainment,answers,manage,plan,home,fun and a number of IFTTT recipes at https://ifttt.com/google_assistant?utm_source=en-ha-na-gdn . On the other hand Alexa has a full set of APIs and related ecosystem to support it, of course using AWS services, see here https://developer.amazon.com/alexa . Even the investment community is highlighting the gap with Fool.com making the case at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/20/3-simple-reasons-google-home-wont-beat-amazons-ech.aspx . This is Google - they know better - why the hold up?