SAN FRANCISCO—We’re live from Google’s big hardware event, and the latest item to be announced is the Google Home Mini. If Google’s Home hardware strategy is “copy whatever Amazon is doing, but with Google software” then the Google Home is the Amazon Echo, and the Mini is Google’s answer to the Echo Dot.

The original $129 Google Home combined Google Assistant smarts with a decent speaker system good enough to fill a room with sound. The Google Home Mini drops the beefy speaker setup for one designed to mainly handle voice responses. In return, you get a much smaller body and presumably a smaller price tag.