Google has just announced a new restriction on Google Home calls. From December, in fact, only the numbers saved in Google Contacts will be accessible by the Assistant. A limitation which, however, only affects Australian and American users, as this feature is still not available in Europe ...
Limit calls on Google Home
It was through a simple message in the app that American users of the search engine's voice assistant learned a " important change in appeals »Telling them that they would have to create a contact for each person called from their connected speakers Google Home from December.
In other words, if you want to call someone from your Nest Hub, your Nest audio, or any Google Assistant compatible device, it must first be entered in the Google Contacts application.
« From December 2021, phone calls supported by Google from your smart speakers, smart displays and smart clocks can only be made to numbers from your Google contacts. You can ask the Google Assistant to make phone calls to friends, family, and businesses on your speaker, smart display, or smart clock »Explains the Mountain View firm before specifying that "VYou will no longer be able to receive incoming phone calls ”. Unless, here too, the contact is previously registered.
Avoid unwanted calls?
But why is that? To get to know your contacts better! No, this is not a priori for espionage purposes, but to ensure that you do not receive no unwanted calls to your connected speakers.
Although Google does not give an explanation on this subject, it would seem that this limitation of calls to only registered contacts is linked to too many complaints about unwanted calls. Indeed, many American users have reported errors from their interlocutors, telephone canvassing, even downright toxic practices such as ping call or scam.
We can only congratulate Google as the problem is already great on our telephone lines where unwanted calls are commonplace due to a certain complacency on the part of our operators, a phenomenon that our parliamentarians have great difficulty in stemming even by legislating ... It remains to be seen when the Google Home calls will be available in France!
