Google has made a smart lamp but you can’t have it

Google has made a rather sleek and enticing looking smart lamp, which features built-in Google Assistant support, but they’re not selling it. 

Google designer Ben Gold has officially revealed Google’s latest innovation, a lamp named the “dLight,” which is primarily designed for video conferencing through emitting light, just like a regular lamp would do. 

To make the delightful dLight just a little bit special, it’s able to change its colour temperature through a variety of presets and you’re also able to pivot the light to provide the best lighting conditions for your video conferencing setup.

Featuring a very clean circular base, thin stalk, and an oval light diffuser, there’s solid reasoning to say that the dLight looks good, so long as you’re into ultra-modern home furnishings, however, no matter how much you compliment it, chances are you won’t be able to get your hands on it. 

https://twitter.com/bengold/status/1491982105332666390

“This product will likely never be for sale outside of the company,” Gold revealed, much to the dismay of anyone invested in the latest innovations in lamp technology. This means that if you want to get your hands on the dLight, your best shot is getting a job at Google that requires a whole lot of video conferencing. Even then, however, the light is still on backorder. 

While this lamp does look very snazzy if you’re going for an entirely white desk setup, it’s not an entirely unheard-of feat of engineering to control a lamp with your voice. With no microphone onboard, the dLight doesn’t offer much over already available solutions that you’re able to achieve with any run of the mill smart speaker and compatible smart plugs.

To make matters worse for consumers outside of Google who already want to get their hands on the dLight, the lamp may be getting even better over time, as Gold revealed that the lamp gets over the air firmware updates and even has a USB-C port for ambiguous “future expansion.”