Here’s a sneaky interesting little feature that Google announced at its “Google for Brazil” event today.
Within Google Business listings in Brazil, local businesses can now integrate their WhatsApp profile, enabling searchers to make direct contact via the app.
As you can see in these examples, now, Brazilian business owners will be able to add a WhatsApp link to their Google Business profile, which will facilitate direct flow-through from the Google Search result to a WhatsApp chat.
This is only available to Brazilian-based brands at this stage, and with WhatsApp being the most used messaging platform in the region by far, it makes a lot of sense. But it is interesting to see Google and Meta working hand-in-hand once again on another potentially significant feature.
Meta also recently unveiled Google Search results within its Meta A.I. chatbot responses, which is a big step, especially considering that Google is also developing its own A.I. chatbot tool.
These are fringe integrations, I guess, and it’s not like Meta and Google are teaming up on some major, world-changing project. But for a long time, Google had been seeking to blow Meta out of the water, even creating its own social network in order to fend off potential competition from Zuckerberg’s rising juggernaut.
Clearly, Google’s now conceded that battle, and with that out of the way, maybe we are going to see more of these types of partnerships between The Big G and Zuck’s crew.
It feels like an unlikely pairing, but with Zuckerberg clearly opposed to Apple’s approach to tech development, maybe a broader partnership with Google does make sense.
Imagine a combined Google/Meta approach to AR glasses, or Google integration in VR, as opposed to each going it alone.
I don’t think we’re at that level quite yet, but it is interesting to see a few little integrations trickling through.
