When it arrives mid-year, talking to Google's attentive benchtop speaker will be more about striking up a conversation than simply issuing commands.

Google's pint-sized smart speaker is finally coming to Australia, designed to sit on your kitchen bench, coffee table or bedside table so it's always at your beck and call. It's completely hands-free, relying on the AI-powered Google Assistant; just say "Okay Google" to get its attention and then tell it what you need.

Google Home is going to cost more than $200 in Australia so you really need a good use for it once the novelty wears off, just as you might have grown weary of taunting the talkative assistant on your smartphone.

The developers of Google Home and Google Assistant say that the four main uses people find for the smart speaker are answering queries, playing music, managing your schedule and controlling your smart home devices. If you'd tick at least two of those boxes then you might consider Google Home good value, especially when you consider that 'answering queries' extends to services which are connected to Google such as flight times and traffic reports.

Listen closely

Google Assistant's strengths compared to other interactive voice assistants are its power to comprehend natural language rather than just keywords and its ability to remember context from your previous question. As a testament to its abilities, Google says around 70 per cent of voice interactions are natural language rather than users barking orders, because they trust it to understand them.

This means you can ask "Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?" followed by "How tall is he?" and Google Assistant knows that you're still talking about Justin Trudeau. Apple's Siri is making progress in this department but there's work to be done; ask Siri the second question and she replies "Okay, I found this on the web for "How tall is Canada".

So when you get past the fun and games, where would you put Google Home to work? To me it makes the most sense in the kitchen. It's the place where you're most likely to have your hands full making it inconvenient to reach for your phone, whether you're making school lunches or cooking dinner. Google is adding the ability to set timers, alarms and reminders via Google Home, which will certainly make it more useful in a busy kitchen.

The kitchen is also a room which is less likely to have a decent speaker compared to the living areas of your home, so Google Home is handy if you like to listen to music while you cook – controlling your music hands-free.

Time to shop

Considering all this, it's interesting that shopping didn't get a mention in that list of top uses from Google's developers, even though Google Home works with Google Shopping Express in the US (unfortunately it isn't available in Australia).

If you envision yourself standing in front of your open pantry and dictating a shopping list or even ordering items directly, then Amazon's Echo smart speaker might be a better fit in your kitchen. It's not available in Australia yet but it's certainly on the cards considering that Amazon intends to finally get serious about Australian retail this year. 

That said, Google insists it's working hard to forge partnerships with Australian providers before it launches, which will include retailers. You'll likely be able to order a pizza with your voice, rather than opening a separate app on your phone, and it's possible that local supermarkets could also get in on the act.

A matter of trust

This brings us to my key concern about Google Home living in my kitchen; the thought of my children discovering that pizza is only an "Okay Google" away. In the US, Google Home can distinguish between different voices but this feature has been slow to roll out globally and Google can't confirm whether it will be available at launch in Australia.

Meanwhile all voices are treated equally and perhaps it would benefit from a fingerprint reader to confirm some requests, unless you opt to disable this extra security measure.

Once Google Home knows exactly who you are, it becomes a lot more practical to ask "what's on my calendar today?" Even when multi-user support eventually comes to Australia, Google assumes that every user is at least 13 years old so it doesn't offer a lot in terms of granular parental controls.

This means you'll need to dive into your children's advanced Google account settings if you want to ensure that Google Home doesn't become a bottomless vending machine or start answering awkward questions like "where do babies come from?"

It'll take some trial and error, with a few awkward moments along the way, to figure out exactly how Google Home fits into your life. What would you use it for?

Adam Turner travelled to the Google I/O conference in California as a guest of Google.