You’ll soon be able to use your Nest Hub to make dinner reservations
Lost in the rubble of yesterday’s announcement from Google about Stadia coming to the Chromecast with Google TV and Apple’s WWDC 2021 keynote, a new feature was announced for Nest smart displays. Google Duplex is a feature that was introduced a few years ago that allows you to use Google Assistant to do things like book a reservation at a restaurant or an appointment at the hair salon. But until now, it’s been limited to just smartphones, which kind of defeats part of the purpose of having a smart display in your home.
Yesterday, Google announced that Duplex functionality is coming “soon” to Nest smart displays. Once it arrives, you’ll be able to say “Hey Google, book a table at Osteria Morini”. Then Assistant will take care of the heavy-lifting and will book the reservation for you, so you can continue doing whatever else you need to do.
The feature is still currently marked as “coming soon”, but we are expecting to see Duplex arrive on Nest smart displays in the coming weeks. Another new feature that was also announced is already available, and that’s the new Guest Mode.
Guest Mode is already available on your Nest smart displays, and allows you to play music or ask questions without those requests being saved. But until now, the responses and interactions were limited to English speakers. Starting today, Assistant can offer responses in the following languages:
- French
- Italian
- German
- Spanish
- Japanese
- Korean
The update is already available now, as it likely comes as a server-side flick of the switch for Google.
Let us know what you think about the upcoming integration with Duplex and your Nest smart display, and what you think about having Assistant make your reservations for you.