Google Home coming to Japan, hands-free calling due in UK later in 2017

Along with the official reveal of the new Google Home Mini and Google Home Max speakers, there were a ton of other Google Home related announcements that were made today at the company’s hardware press event. One of them is that the speaker will be sold in a new and major market, Japan, starting sometime next week.

In addition, the hands-free calling feature for Google Home, which launched in the US a few months ago, is scheduled to be added to the UK sometime before the end of 2017. The company added that it will soon add a feature that will allow Google Home to use your personal phone number for those outgoing calls for the first time.

Voice Match is also rolling out as an update to Google Home starting today. It will allow the speaker to use Google’s AI to recognize specific people who are using voice commands and tailor responses to each speaker. Another new feature is Broadcasts, which will allow users to broadcast a message on all of the Google Home speakers in a home. This should be very helpful for busy families.

Speaking of which, Google will soon add new family-linked account settings to Google Home speakers. That will allow moms and dads to set up specific commands that can only be handled by their kids. Finally, Google is working with a number of media companies, including Disney, to add kid-friendly content for Google Home, including Pixel and Star Wars.