Google published a blog post today, about how you can make video calls with the Google Assistant. And in that blog post, Google quietly announced that Zoom would be coming to Google Assistant smart displays by the end of the year.
Google name-dropped the Nest Hub Max, but it will work with all Assistant-enabled smart displays. Including those from Lenovo, JBL and others.
Free and paid Zoom users can use this
According to Google, both free and paid Zoom accounts are going to be able to join a video call directly from Smart Displays.
And users will be able to use voice commands like “Hey Google, join my next meeting”. And that will grab your personal Google Calendar to start a meeting.
Google has not provided any other specifics, and the “by the end of the year” phrase is pretty broad. So it could come next month, or on December 31. We really don’t know right now.
We don’t know this for sure, but it is likely that the Zoom capability will be limited to smart displays that have a video built-in. There are some – like the Nest Hub – that do not have a camera built in. So Zoom would be pretty much useless on those.
Google Assistant won’t be the first smart display to feature Zoom
Zoom had been rumored to launch on the Facebook Portal earlier this year. But, Zoom quickly had to shift its focus to security, after a number of security issues arose as people started working from home in March. However, Facebook announced today that Zoom, BlueJeans and a few other video conferencing apps will be coming to Portal very soon.
With more and more of us working from home, and spending all day on Zoom calls (and other video chatting services), being able to use them on other devices can be a pretty big deal. Using a smart display for a meeting can be very useful, as you can still work on your computer on documents and such, while you are in the meeting, and also still able to see what’s going on.
Zoom will join Google’s Duo and Meet on its Smart Displays later this year. Hopefully Zoom will make it over to Google Assistant-enabled smart displays before it kills Duo completely. As we found out last week, that Google has plans to kill off Duo. Which is expected, Google loves to kill off its products once they get popular.