According to recent reports, half a million Google Homes have been sold since its launch in October. That’s probably more (or close) than the number of Echos that were delivered by Amazon in its first three months (from the time deliveries started). The rollout is difficult to compare but it’s still many devices for a relatively new category.

Some of the advantages that Google had over Amazon at launch were that:

• The Home was available within a month of the announcement
• It was available in brick and mortar retail
• The device was deliverable within time for the holiday season
• The launch gave a full quarter warning

Of course, the disadvantages were:

• Google did not have its own marketing channel like the front page of Amazon
• The device didn’t go through a pre-order stage to build interest (like Gmail)
• Google is long after the Echo and it’s not as refreshing a product as when the Echo was launched

We’re already seeing the first announcements of Google Assistant SDK hardware so it’ll be interesting to see how many devices are Assistant-enabled within a year of its launch.