Google used to sell a Frozen II-themed Google Home Mini that came bundled with a few bedtime stories that you could activate via a kid and family-friendly service called ‘Read Along’. Truly, this was available for all Home speakers, but having the brand partnership with Disney helped the company sell more units, naturally. Still, it came in an ice blue color and featured Anna and Elsa on the packaging.
Sadly, back in February of last year, Disney pulled its books off of the Read Along service, likely to do to a failed license renewal, and Frozen II, Peter Pan, Mulan, Moana, Toy Story 3 and so many other audible titles were no longer able to be used to lull your little ones to sleep.
We received some good news today though, in the form of a Google Keyword blog where the company revealed that it has now made ‘Read Along’ available in beta as a web application that can be accessed by anyone on their Chromebooks or desktops.
Google states that over the past 3 years, more than 30 million kids have learned to read more than 120 million stories on Read Along, and that the assistance and correctional tools and encouragement for young readers being built in have contributed to helping them read independently.
These same tools are now available by visiting the brand new Read Along Website. Don’t forget to turn the site into an icon on your desktop or ChromeOS device so you can get to it with one click! Additionally, you can still install the Google Play version of the app below using the Play Store button.
With the web version of Read Along, parents can let their kids read on larger screens with a more appropriate visual layout than the app would have on tablets or tablet-style Chromebooks. Speech recognition still occurs in the browser, and your child’s voice data remains private as it’s not sent to any Google servers. My son loved the app, and now that it’s available as a PWA, I’m sure going to sit him in front of it and see what he thinks later this week.
Let me know in the comments if your kids have enjoyed Read Along, or if you were even aware it existed. Sadly, the Disney stories are still unavailable, and to be honest, I doubt they will ever return to the service, but there are still a load of stories that can be read or read out loud even without the Mouse House contributing to the mix.
