Google Duplex was announced back at I/O 2018 with the goal of making your life easier. It's part of Google Assistant, and it can call restaurants or businesses to schedule an appointment or reservation for you without going through online booking systems. Duplex has a robot call the business, talk to an employee, and take that information to schedule an appointment or reservation based on what you asked for.

When Google first announced this feature, I thought that it was cool, albeit creepy, and I also questioned how well it would work. We heard almost nothing about Duplex besides that it would be rolling out slowly in the summer of 2018, months before the Google Pixel 3 launched. When the Pixel 3 did finally launch, Duplex became more widely available, but only in four cities and only for limited groups of people. This didn't change until early last month when Google announced it would be available in 43 states on every Pixel phone and eventually other Android and iOS devices in the coming weeks. Through my own usage, we have confirmed it is already rolling out to other devices like the Samsung Galaxy S10+.

Last weekend, I needed to make a reservation at a local restaurant for dinner with my family this weekend. I usually use Google Assistant because it has OpenTable integration and that makes it super easy to set up a reservation. I wasn't sure if this specific restaurant supported OpenTable (it doesn't), but I tried Google Assistant anyway. Assistant went on to say it will call the restaurant for me and asked for the party size, date, and time. Once it did this, it said to wait 15 minutes and I will get a notification confirming my reservation. Under 6 minutes later, my reservation was confirmed.

Google Duplex really does make life easy for those who don't have the time call to make a reservation or appointment yourself. It takes under a minute and Google handles the rest for you. The limited roll out at first really didn't help it gain the attention it deserves, but now that it's more widely available, it should be getting used more and more.