The Google Assistant is now a Google messaging service - Ars Technica

Receiving a Google Assistant Broadcast on a phone. On the left is a notification. On the right is an individual message.

Google
Like on any other messaging service, you can have a whole conversation (left). You can reply by voice or keyboard (right).

Google
Smart displays will show the message and play audio. Speakers will just play audio.

Google

The Google Assistant's "Broadcast" feature has long existed as a way to blast a message to every Google smart speaker in the house. Instead of hunting down every individual family member at dinner time, put those smart speakers to work by saying, "Hey Google, broadcast 'It's dinner time!'"

In a new blog post, Google called Broadcast "one of our most popular Assistant features" and announced that the feature is expanding to show messages on phones, too, even when they're outside the home Wi-Fi network. That means Broadcast is basically turning into a new Google messaging service.

Broadcast will now be able to send and receive messages on the Google Home and Nest smart speakers, the Google Home Hub and Nest Hub smart displays, any Android phone, and iPhones running the Google Assistant app. Phones will get a notification when new messages arrive, and group chat members include both individual people (presumably with personal devices like a phone) and more public home devices. Just like any other messaging service, opening the notification will show a scrolling list of broadcast messages. The one big limitation is that the messaging only happens within a Google Family Group. If you want to include an outsider, you'll have to awkwardly switch group messaging services.

Broadcast messaging uses audio by default, so speakers and smart displays will play the voice recording of your message. Phones and smart displays will show a transcription of your message and a play button, so you can listen or read if you want, and it looks like phones have the option of typing a response, too. Presumably, this would playback on speakers using text-to-speech.

One of many bespoke Google messaging services

Google has never been able to throw its full weight behind a single messaging service, and the constant launching and shutting down of competing messaging services has left the company without a competitive messaging platform to back. Several Google apps like the Google Assistant have aimed to include some smaller messaging functionality over the years, but without a clear Google service to plug into, they end up spinning up their own bespoke messaging services.

Besides this Google Assistant messaging service, YouTube Messaging existed from 2017 to 2019, Google Maps Messages (to message businesses) launched in 2018, Google Photos Messaging launched in 2019, Stadia Messaging was added in 2020, and Google Pay Messaging came out of beta with the app revamp in March 2021. And who could forget Google Docs Chat, which has existed seemingly forever, though awkwardly only on desktop clients. We can also give half-credit to Google News, which lets you send a message with a shared news article and will pop up a notification through the Google News app, although the feature doesn't support replies. It would be nice if any of these services talked to each other through a single Google Messaging service, but instead, you'll be managing individual contact lists and message histories.

This is one of a few new Google Assistant features that is supposed to arrive "just in time" for Mother's Day (this Sunday—you all remembered, right?) so it should be rolling out soon.

Listing image by Google

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