With the holiday season upon us, Google is sharing ways that the Google Assistant can help you throughout the holiday season. And it is also rolling out a new feature that can broadcast messages. That feature was actually announced a couple of weeks ago, but it is rolling out this week, so that users can actually use it. Broadcast Messages allows you to, well broadcast a message to all of the Google Assistant devices in your home. This means that if you are at the grocery store and need to find out if you need milk, you can send a message to the Google Home speakers at home to have someone check and see. You can also let the entire home know breakfast is ready, as just a few examples.
Other features that the Google Assistant has that will work out great during the holidays is the ability to read along with the Google Assistant. There are many popular Disney books available with this feature, including Frozen, Aladdin, Mulan and even The Lion King to name a few. This is a great way to help get the kids reading, or just do story time with the Google Assistant which will add sound effects to make story time even more realistic. There are also some Nickelodeon stories that you can listen too. And these include Dora the Explorer’s The Little Christmas Tree, and PAW Patrol’s Holiday Helpers, as well as many more.
Google touts that by using the Nest Hello, you can see who’s at the door on your smart display like the Google Home Hub or Lenovo Smart Display. Nest Hello sports two-way audio so you can talk to whoever is at the door as well. Speaking of smart displays, another feature that works great here is for music. Smart Displays can show visual lyrics on screen, which is going to make Karaoke pretty fun, or just singing along while cooking and wrapping presents. Finally, Google is rolling out the Pretty Please feature tomorrow, which means that your family is going to need to be polite to Google Assistant. This is a feature that Google actually debuted back at Google I/O over the summer, and it is finally rolling out. Google found that kids were demanding the Assistant to do things, and forgetting their manners, so to help parents out, they’ll need to say please and thank you to the Assistant. This is a feature that parents can toggle on and off at will, as well. So parents can force their kids to say please when asking Google Assistant something. This means that Google Assistant will say something like “what’s the magic word” when a kid asks it a question, because without that magic word, it will not carry out the query. So it’s going to help teach your kids manners, or if they already have them, reinforce those manners.
Background: The Google Assistant has always been a pretty big help during the holidays, doing things like playing music for you, or bringing up recipes for you to use while you’re cooking and such. But now, you are able to do much more with a few new features and a few new Google Assistant devices. Primarily the introduction of smart displays from Google and its partners. There are four smart displays out there: Google Home Hub, Lenovo Smart Display, JBL’s Link View and LG’s WK9 that just launched. These smart displays make Google Assistant more visual and work really well in the kitchen or the bathroom, allowing you to watch YouTube, and much more. Of course, the read along feature here is going to be a great way to keep kids busy while parents are busy getting ready for the holidays – like wrapping presents or cooking for the family.
Google is always looking to make the Google Assistant a bit more, well helpful. This is because Google wants you to do everything with the Google Assistant, and this includes things that you would normally do every single day. This is why Google has introduced routines, which is something you could still do over the holidays. For example, you could do a routine that would turn on the Christmas tree lights, as well as the lights outside (if you decorated outside), and even start playing some Christmas music on your favorite streaming music platform like Spotify, Google Play Music or another one. Google Assistant can also help you find the right gifts to pick up for everyone on your list.
Impact: The Google Assistant is a pretty helpful assistant, definitely more helpful than Cortana, Alexa and Siri, though Google has been working on Assistant much longer than Microsoft, Amazon and Apple have been working on their own assistants. That is because Google Assistant really started back in 2012 with Google Now, it has just evolved to be much more than that. And Google is still working on Assistant to make sure it can help you with everything you are looking to do. More and more people are using the Google Assistant now, and that is exactly what Google wants, there are hundreds of thousands of queries made every single day to Google Assistant. Whether that is from your smartphone, over your Google Home speaker or using another device, it all adds up, and it is making Google Assistant pretty popular.
Whether you are going to be using the Google Assistant this holiday season to help you cook by finding recipes, read along with the kids on certain books, or even watch some YouTube while you are cooking, it’s going to make the holiday season a lot easier for everyone. And that’s what matters here. The Pretty Please function is going to be rolling out starting tomorrow, and Broadcast Messages will also be available starting this week, two features that are pretty important to Google Assistant and will make the experience even better. For more ways on how the Google Assistant can help you throughout the holidays, check out the Google’s Blog post highlighting how the Google Assistant can help out during the holidays.