How to add Google’s Voice Assistant to Alexa on the Amazon Echo and Fire TV

Posted by Elias Saba on January 24, 2017 — 138 Comments

The two leading voice assistants are Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s unnamed voice assistant. While Alexa is capable of doing more, Google’s voice assistant tends to respond to knowledge questions more accurately with the help of Google’s search engine. Thanks to an open source project, it’s now possible to unofficially add Google’s voice assistant to Amazon Echo and Fire TV devices as an Alexa Skill. This allows you to simply say “Alexa, ask Google …” followed by any question to hear Google’s answer. Here’s how to set it up on your Amazon account.

When you add “Ask Google” support to Alexa, you’re adding a voice interface that can read Google’s knowledge graph answers. While it’s a very powerful addition, it isn’t exactly the same as Google’s Home speaker. Because this is an unofficial implementation of Google’s service, there is no pre-made Alexa Skill to enable, so you’re going to have to create your own. While that may sound difficult, and the guide below may seem long, the entire process is just a series of copy & paste values that you need to enter into various forms.

Credit goes to tartanguru on GitHub for creating this Alexa Skill, the Adrian Smart Project team for creating the Google search module, and Alexa Mods for creating a guide which heavily influenced the guide below.

Guide

Create a free Amazon AWS account at https://aws.amazon.com. You will need to enter credit card information when signing up, but just select the free Basic plan when asked and you will never be charged. You will also need to verify your phone number through an automated call. After you’ve signed up, you can verify you’re on the free plan by going to this page and checking that it says “Current support plan: Basic” at the top.
Once your account is created and you’re logged in, be sure you have US East (N. Virginia) selected if you’re in the US, or EU (Ireland) selected if you’re in the UK or Germany, in the upper right menu.
Now click on Services in the upper left corner and select the Lambda option.
Click the Get Started Now button, then select Configure triggers from the menu on the left.
Click the dotted square icon, select Alexa Skills Kit, then click Next.
Enter google in the “Name” field, leave the “Description” field blank, select Node.js in the “Runtime” option, and select Upload a .ZIP file for the “Code entry type” field.
In another browser window/tab, go to this page and click the download button to download an Archive.zip file.
Back on the AWS page, click the “Upload” button and upload the Archive.zip file you just downloaded.
In the “Lambda function handler and role” section of the page, leave index.handler for the “Handler” field, select Create new role from template(s) for the “Role” field, and enter lambda_basic_execution for the “Role name” field.
In the “Advanced settings” section, leave 128 for the “Memory” option and enter 10 seconds for the “Timeout” field. Leave the rest of the page unchanged.
Click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page and then click the “Create function” button on the following “Review” screen. Creation will take several seconds.
Copy the entire “ARN” value in the upper right corner of the page and save it for later. It looks like this: arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:############:function:google
Now, create a free Amazon Developers account at https://developer.amazon.com. Select No for both options on the “Payments” screen.
Once signed into the Amazon Developer site, click the “Alexa” button in the navigation menu across the top, then click the “Get Started” button under the “Alexa Skills Kit” option, then click the “Add a New Skill” button in the top right.
Leave the “Skill Type” as Custom Interaction Model and enter google for both the “Name” field and “Invocation Name” field. Then click the “Next” button.

Copy and paste the following into the “Intent Schema” field:

{
  "intents": [
    {
      "intent": "SearchIntent",
   "slots": [
     {
       "name": "search",
       "type": "SEARCH"
     }
   ]    


    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.StopIntent"
    }
  ]
}

Click the “Add Slot Type” button, then enter SEARCH in the “Enter Type” field, then enter who is the queen followed by why is the sky blue in the “Values” field, and click the “Save” button.
In the “Sample Utterances” box, enter SearchIntent {search} and click the “Next” button.
For the “Service Endpoint Type” field, select AWS Lambda ARN, select your region, paste your ARN value that you saved from earlier, select the No option under the “Account Linking” section, and click the “Next” button.
You’re done and ready to say “Alexa, ask Google …” followed by anything you want.
You can verify the newly created Alexa Skill is enabled by going to http://alexa.amazon.com (or the Alexa mobile app), select “Skills” from the menu on the left, select “Your Skills” in the upper right, scroll to the bottom and select the “google” skill.