Google I/O: Google Home will now let you make voice calls, catching up to Alexa

LOS ANGELES — Google announced new features for its Google Home personal assistant product Wednesday, with one key catch-up to rival Amazon — free phone calls to the United States and Canada mobile and landline phones.

Google Home, which is a distant No. 2 in the personal digital assistant speaker market to Amazon's Echo speaker line, announced many new tools for the Home that tap into the Google Assistant. The assistant is Google's answer to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Samsung's Bixby and looks to use voice computing for both search and daily tasks.

In Google's vision of the utopian world, we would use Google Home to answer basic search questions. We could control the living room entertainment experience by announcing shows and channels we want to watch via the additional Chromecast accessory dongle that plugs into the TV. Our queries would be displayed from Google Home on the TV visually.

At the Google I/O developer conference, Google showed examples of getting mapping and weather information from Google Home and showcasing it on televisions.

Google Home currently works with select partners to offer voice computing on their entertainment services. New ones added at I/O include Spotify's free, ad-supported music service, HBO Now, Hulu, SoundCloud for music and podcasts and the European music service Deezer.

The feature that many users will opt for is sure to be free phone calls, which will come to Google Home over the next few months, said Rishi Chandra, Google's vice-president of Home products.

Amazon added voice calling and messaging to Alexa earlier this month.