Google has rolled out the long awaited ability to make calls using Assistant on Google Home in the US and Canada using your Wi-Fi connection.
Announced during Google I/O in May, the new feature allows anyone in the US or Canada to make free phone calls to landlines or mobile phones from their Google Home unit. Google says that you can make calls to numbers listed in your contacts using phrases like “Hey Google, call mum” as well as calling local businesses like “Hey Google, call Woolworths Queanbeyan”.
There are limits to the calls, with Google advising
Calls to premium rate numbers as well as international numbers outside of the U.S. and Canada are not supported unless you link your Project Fi or Google Voice account, at which point you’ll be billed at the published respective listed rates. Calls to 911 are not supported.
At this stage, calling from Google Home will have no caller ID, with users seeing “Unknown” or “No Caller ID” when they receive a call, so if they’re not inclined to answer those calls you may be out of luck.
Google has only ever spoke about launching the feature in the US and Canada. In our discussion at Google I/O with the Assistant and Home teams they wouldn’t commit to ever launching the feature outside of those places, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this option here.
With the Google Home when I say call mom it just knows my mom versus when my wife it knows her mom and then my kids it knows to call my wife.
It just knows and something the Echo can just NOT do for anything. I purchased my Echo in late 2014 and now had it almost 3 years and it still can NOT do this! What gives?
Google Home has only been out 6 months and already has far more functionality.
But all of this is rather moot. The HUGE issue is the Echo still requires commands versus the Google Home you just talk naturally. Really everything else is insignificant. At it’s core the Echo is flawed compared to the Google Home.
The fact the Echo requires commands is why it never integrated in our home and the Google Home is well integrated. I was motivated to sit down and memorize the Echo commands but my family never was.
It would be cool to have but not something needed. There are a lot of improvements needed to the platform in general that I think needed a higher priority.