Software
Zoom comes to Google Nest, Amazon Echo and smart screens in the Facebook Portal
Later this year, Zoom will be growing to include several new devices, which will support the widely used videoconferencing app later this year, including Amazon Echo Show, the Facebook Portal, and Google Nest Hub Max.
This is a major development for Zoom, which has recently started branching into a licensed hardware for video conferencing. And intelligent displays – with their high quality steering microphones and integrated touchscreens – have been designed to be good for video conferencing.
Google, Amazon and Facebook are doing a lot for the new Zoom integration, too, as these three companies have almost exclusively stuck to a smart display for their own in-house video chatting solutions.
Zoom, with its rollout planned for September, will be the first portal to receive.
Zoom is implemented somewhat differently by all three solutions. In addition to Facebook's new apps, GoToMeeting and Webex, which were announced today as well, Facebook's portal devices will add a Zoom app to automatically hold you in the frame, just as it does with the own Messenger and WhatsApp calls of Faceboocs. Facebook's smart camera technology.
Facebook also reduces the Portal 's reliability on your Facebook accounts, which means that the company adds an option to use a Facebook working place account for "the coming weeks" in place of requiring a Facebook or WhatsApp account to log in to a portal.
Google will, on the other hand, build on its Calendar and Assistant services that will automatically be able to directly from your calendar to existing zoom meetings and enable users to initiate meetings with voice commands like Hey Google, join my following meeting.
(It unfortunately makes it less useful for juggling work and personal meetings at Zoom if Google restricts Nest Hubs to a single account.)
Customers from Alexa will also receive a similar experience. Displaying Echo devices which have been synchronised with your calendar can start meetings automatically without users having to enter a meeting ID or password manually and Alexa Voice controls are also supported. This year, starting with an Echo Show 8, will see Amazon's rollout start.
