Google Tone Chrome extension lets users share URLs over audio

Sharing a URL to a web page is extremely easy with simple copy-paste and using the several mode of communication such as email, messenger and so on. Now, if your friend is sitting right beside you, sharing a URL gets even simpler with Google Tone.

Google Tone is a Chrome extension allowing users to share a link to anyone within hearing range with a single click. Google Tone embeds a button to the right of Chrome’s URL bar. On clicking the button, the extension emits a tone to share the link currently open in Chrome to anyone nearby, provided the other person also has Google Tone installed. The other user will get a notification with your Googlr profile name and a new tab will open on clicking on the notification.

The Google Research blog describes it as an experimental Chrome extension for instant sharing over audio.

“Tone provides an easy-to-understand broadcast mechanism that behaves like the human voice—it doesn’t pass through walls like radio or require pairing or addressing. The initial prototype used an efficient audio transmission scheme that sounded terrible, so we played it beyond the range of human hearing. However, because many laptop microphones and nearly all video conferencing systems are optimized for voice, it improved reliability considerably to also include a minimal DTMF-based audible codec. The combination is reliable for short distances in the majority of audio environments even at low volumes, and it even works over Hangouts,” the blogpost explains.

Users looking to experiment with this new extension can download it from here.