Amazon Echo and Google Home to offer voice calling?
Could Amazon Echo and Google Home be about to offer voice calling via their smart speakers? That’s what website Wearable reckons and it certainly makes sense.
Although not officially confirmed, the story comes from the Wall Street Journal’s sources. Apparently both companies are looking to offer VOIP (voice over internet protocol) calls via the smart speakers with Amazon considering letting users sync their phone number with the Echo or giving it a new phone number with call forwarding.
It’s not clear whether this kind of functionality would roll out to other devices with microphones that run Amazon’s Alexa Voice Services. However, both Amazon and Google are apparently ready to launch the voice calling feature on their flagship smart speakers later this year.
The move is likely to spark some concerns though. One is around what Amazon and Google will record and how they store these recordings. Apparently, Amazon plans to only collect the metadata of calls – ie. the duration and dialled numbers, rather than the recording itself. Will Google do the same? Watch this space.
See our round up of Amazon Echo accessories here
3 comments
It will be more useful when it records voice call of particular contacts and delivering the voice message of daily routines or reminding official meeting, alarms, play mp3 etc.,
It is rumored that Amazon Echo and Google Home will be launching Voice Calling features later this year. It will be interesting to see what aspects of the call will be taped.
Amazon’s Voice Calling feature to be deployed is said to gather only details regarding the call duration and the phone numbers and not the conversation itself.
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