Oliver Haslam·

Google Home Getting Hands-Free Calling, Proactive Assistant, More

Google’s developer conference, Google I/O 2017, is up and running and the company has taken the lid off a host of new features that are arriving on its Google Home devices. Those range from additional music functionality to “proactive assistant” and all have the potential to really give Google Home a boost in a world where Amazon’s Echo still remains the number one home personal assistant on the market.

While nothing announced is already available nor pencilled in for a release date, Google did use the words “coming soon” a lot, so hopefully “soon” isn’t too far away.

Kicking things off, and perhaps the most exciting for us, is the proactive assistant push, which will allow Google Home to, for example, tell you when you have a flight coming up or need to leave home in order to reach the office for an appointment. All of this will be done without prompting, and is one feature that Google Home users have been asking for. Well, it is now on its way.

Music-wise, support for Deezer and non-premium Spotify accounts is coming with SoundCloud thrown in for good measure. Those of you who still talk to people on the phone will also be able to do that via Google Home, with the device either using its own phone number or the one of your phone if you tell it to.

Those who use Google Home to interact with Chromecast will also be able to do so with additional channels. Those will include YouTube, Netflix, Google Photos, HBO Now, Hulu, YouTube TV, Google Play Movies and TV, CBS All Access, the Food Network, the CW, HGTV, Red Bull TV, the Travel Channel, Crackle, the DIY Network, R-Viki, and the Cooking Channel. That’s a long list indeed, and when you are not watching those, Chromecast can now also be used to output content that Google Home generates following a request. Ask for the weather, and the forecast can be shown on a TV via Chromecast.

We don’t know when any of this will arrive, but Google Home continues to grow. With Google I/O still underway, we wonder what else the company has up its sleeve.

You might also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the Web.