Now as far as the new features go, Google is adding a bunch of features that are going to sound familiar to iMessage users, actually. One of those being the ability to message businesses directly from Google Search and Maps. This is something that iMessage on the iPhone already does, and works as another way for businesses to help out their customers. It’s currently an experimental feature, but it should work pretty cohesively with the other Google services.
Messages by Google adds reminders, in-line replies & more
Next up on the list of features, Google is adding the ability to reply to an individual message in a conversation, and react to SMS texts from iPhone users with emoji reactions. These are two big features that really needed to be added. Of course, the ability to do in-line replies is a bigger deal for group texts. And being able to react with emojis to iPhone texts is a nice change as well. Currently, it will still show the person’s name, reacted to and then the message, on iPhone though. Google is also adding voice message transcription to a number of other phones. This was announced with the Pixel 7 series. And now it will be moving over to the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy Z Fold 4. However, the only downside here is that if the caller didn’t leave a voicemail, you still get a message that’s empty. Something that we hope Google fixes soon. Now you’ll also be able to set reminders in Messages. So you can remind yourself of important things like birthdays, anniversaries, meetups, etc. You can also set a reminder for the reminder. So when the reminder pops up, you have an option to remind yourself in an hour. Which is pretty hilarious. Google will now allow you to watch YouTube videos directly in Messages, while you are replying to someone else. You’ll also be able to “star” a message to help you keep track of important messages. Messages can now intelligently suggest Meet calls and Calendar events based on the message too. Finally, Google has a new partnership with United Airlines which will allow for free messaging on United flights when you have RCS turned on. Google has said that they hope to expand this to other airlines, but for now it is limited to just United.
