Google forgets to ask Google if it would rain when it planned a CES stand

Chris Merriman
@ChrisTheDJ
10 January 2018

Tweet
Facebook
Google plus
Send to

"OK GOOGLE - will it rain today?". See? Not ruddy hard is it? In fact, it's sort of the crux of Google's entire reason for being at CES this year.

Someone forgot to mention it to the people planning the huge Google mega structure stand. It's not waterproof, and it has chucked it down in Vegas.

To be fair, it's a bit of surprise. Deserts generally don't get a lot of rain, but then it snowed in the Sahara this week, so all bets are off.

Nevertheless, there's been a hurried motion towards getting tarps up, and getting the electrics safe from, you know, blowing up.

Remember, this isn't at an indoor venue. It's a purpose-built outdoor venue in the car park. With a slide. Which became a water slide.

It's also a war room, as Google fights off the dominant Alexa in the battleground of voice assistants that has been the main event of this year's CES so far, with the first blow going to Amazon's announcement that Alexa is coming to Windows 10.

With a huge variety of new products based around Google Assistant on display from a variety of manufacturers and based on everything from headphones to in-car stuff entertainment, there's a lot of money sitting in that booth waiting to get fried and with signs saying "Hey Google" everywhere, it's no secret as to why Google has made an uncharacteristically huge effort to be at CES this year.

Oh, and did we mention there's a video wall? Yeah. There's a ruddy huge video wall. On the plus side, if the rain continues we'll get a lovely light show.

CES is far from over, but losing a day of exhibiting because someone didn't think the design through is a little bit embarrassing. And although the official line is that they were worried about people slipping in the car park, you can't really ignore that there was a very good chance of recreating Benjamin Franklin's Kite Experiment at the same time.

And if you don't know what that means - ask Google. µ