Official Web Master Blog

Reminders are a new feature in the latest version of the Google Search app for Android. You can create reminders using voice search and Google Now will show notifications.

Now you can also create reminders from the desktop Google Search when you search for events. Use queries like [when is bonnaroo 2013?], [when is the first day of summer?], [halloween day] and Google shows a link that says: "Remind me on Google Now".


Click the link and "Google Now will remind you 1 week before." For now, notifications are only available if you use the Google Search app for Android, which also lets you manage reminders (delete reminders and set new ones).


{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Amit Singhal announced at Google I/O that this is "the end of search as we know it". The future of search goes beyond search results and it has more to do with answering questions, conversations and anticipating user's intentions.

Google has 3 products with similar goals: Knowledge Graph, Voice Search and Google Now. They go hand in hand to deliver the future of search today.

Voice Search has been available on the desktop if you're using Chrome, but now it's much better: it has been upgraded to the conversational voice search released last year for Android and iOS. Just click the microphone icon from the Google search box, ask questions and you'll get a spoken answer. Soon you'll be to just say "OK Google" to trigger voice search.


Google Search for Android added some new Google Now cards: reminders, last train home (Japan only), real time public transit updates and recommendations for books, games and music albums. Google Now can understand things like "remind me to call Susan tomorrow at 10", "when I go to Rome, remind me to buy a new suit" or "remind me to meet Dan when I get to work". You can create both time-based reminders and location-based reminders.


Voice Search is getting more sophisticated, the Knowledge Graph has more facts and connections between concepts, while Google Now gets smarter and tries to anticipate your searches.

{ via Inside Search blog }

Google Now is finally available for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It's not a standalone application, it's just a new feature of the Google Search app.


Google Now for iOS has most of the features from Google's Android app and plenty of customization options that aren't available in the Android app. There aren't many missing cards: research topics, activity summary and events nearby.


I was surprised to see that Google added a lot of settings that let you tweak each card. For example, you can customize the traffic card and decide when it appears and the transportation mode for commutes and other trips.


Since most Google Now cards use location data, it's obvious that Google wants to update your location even when you're not using the app. "Location Reporting helps Google Now show you cards related to traffic alerts, directions, and more. Turning on Location Reporting allows Google to periodically access your location data, even when an app is not in use. If you have Location History enabled, reported locations are stored in your Location History. (...) Since Location Reporting has been optimized to use GPS as infrequently as possible, there should be minimal impact on your battery life." Location Reporting can be disabled from the app's settings section, while Location History can be disabled from the Google Latitude site.

It's interesting to notice that Google Now for iOS is placed less prominently, at the bottom of the screen. You need to swipe up to see the cards. Google Search for iOS doesn't show notifications yet, so you need to constantly open the application to see the new information.

It looks like Google Now won't be limited to Android, iOS and Chrome, it will also be added to Google's homepage. Some code from a page that's tested by Google offers more information about this feature.

"Get started with Google Now. Just the right information at just the right time." That's how Google introduces the new feature. "Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places," explains Google. You can edit the home location, work location and the current location. Another feature lets you track your favorite stocks.



It's not clear how Google Now for desktop will look, but this screenshot reveals a possible implementation (it's from a Chrome extension developed by Google):


Here's the Google Search app interface for Android tablets (Nexus 10 gallery):


As I mentioned here, Google Now could replace some of iGoogle's functionality. Here's an early version of iGoogle from 2006:


{ Thanks, F. }

Here's something I don't understand: why do so many people confuse Google Now with Google Voice Search? There are a lot of articles that compare Google Now with Siri or claim that Google Now is a voice assistant.


Google Now is a feature of the Google Search app for Android that shows information about what's happening right now or in the near future: weather, calendar events, reservations, travel information. Try this: disable Google Now in Google's search app and you can still use voice search. After all, Google Voice Search has been available before Google Now. Google Search for iOS includes Voice Search, but it doesn't have Google Now yet.

One of the explanations why many people confuse Google Now with Google Voice Search is that Google Now and the improved Voice Search have been announced at the same time, when Jelly Bean was released. Google Now is shorter and sounds better than Google Voice Search.

Even the Wikipedia article for Google Now is inaccurate: "Google Now is an intelligent personal assistant available for Google's Android operating system. An extension of Android's native Google Search application, Google Now uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of web services. Along with answering user-initiated queries, Google Now passively delivers information to the user that it predicts they will want, based on their search habits."

Update: two days later, it no longer works.

Google Now has a cool feature that shows useful results for the topics you've recently explored using Google Search. Now you can find all the topics if you visit this page. Unfortunately, the links to the topic pages only work from an Android device.



It's likely that Google notices when you're clicking a lot of search results and refine your query multiple times and creates a new topic. Google automatically classifies topics and it lets you filter the topics by time. Google Now Topics could be a modern version of Google Alerts if Google added more notification options.

{ Thanks, Florian. }

The Google Search app for Android 4.1+ has been updated with new cards for events nearby, boarding passes, walking and biking activity, birthdays.

There's also a new card for research topics. Google tries to find in your search history a list of related queries. If you've been researching a topic, it's likely that you've tried different versions of a query and you've clicked many search results. Google Now shows a card with other useful pages from the same topic. It's interesting to notice that Google can find the name of the topic and shows a page that groups results for various queries. Google also includes a "history" section with pages you've already visited.

For some reason, the pages generated by Google return an error messages if you try to open them using a desktop browser. You need to change the user-agent to open pages with URLs like https://www.google.com/now/topics/t/LONGID.


"The research topics card appears when your recent Web History includes several searches related to a single topic – such as a trip you're planning – and Google detects relevant webpages that you may not have found yet. For this card to appear, you must have Web History turned on for the account you use with Google Now. To explore more links that may be relevant to the topic, touch Explore at the bottom of the card. From the list of links, touch the History tab to view a summary of your recent Web History related to this topic," informs Google.

Google Search for Android has been updated and the app includes a lot of new Google Now cards. There are cards that use search history data (developing news stories, stocks, concerts, movies), location data (nearby attractions and popular photo spots), but there's a new source of information: your Gmail messages.

Google Now checks your email and tries to find confirmation messages for restaurant reservations, hotel bookings, flights, events you purchased a ticket for, online orders. This way, Google can show notifications and useful information without having to manually add events to Google Calendar. For example, package tracking is now a lot more convenient and you don't have to use a separate app or subscribe to email notifications.


Gmail's desktop interface shows useful links related to your messages: Google Maps for addresses, package tracking links, "add to calendar" for events. Google Now takes this to a new level: sidebar links become smart cards that trigger notifications.

Obviously, the cards are generated automatically by Google's software and no Google employee reads your email. If you don't like the new cards, you can disable them from the settings (the "Google Now" section).


Google Search for Android also brings new voice actions: you can create new events, check your schedule and launch apps.

At the moment, Google Now requires Android Jelly Bean and the Gmail integration is only available in the English interface.

If Android ICS (4.0) was about a completely new user interface, Jelly Bean (4.1) is about refining that interface, improving the performance and adding more features.

Google's Project Butter made Android 4.1 more responsive. The interface is smoother, scrolling feels faster, transitions and animations look better. "Android 4.1 reduces touch latency not only by synchronizing touch to vsync timing, but also by actually anticipating where your finger will be at the time of the screen refresh. This results in a more reactive and uniform touch response. In addition, after periods of inactivity, Android applies a CPU input boost at the next touch event, to make sure there's no latency," explains Google.

Jelly Bean comes with rich notifications that can include more content and buttons. Notifications can be expanded and turn into powerful widgets so you can preview photos, share news articles, snooze alerts without opening an app.


Android's keyboard now predicts what you are about to type. "The language model in Jelly Bean adapts over time, and the keyboard even guesses what the next word will be before you've started typing it." The nice thing is that you don't need an Internet connection to see the suggestions. Google even made Android's text-to-speech feature work offline, but only for English.

Google's search app has a new interface that does a better job at handling simple questions. Instead of displaying a list of search results, Google only shows the Knowledge Graph OneBox that includes an answer, a thumbnail and a link to the source. Voice Search has also improved: you no longer need to use predefined commands, it understands natural language and it speaks back to you, just like Siri.


Sometimes you don't need to type a query to find relevant information. Your Android phone knows a lot about you and can help you solve problems without even asking it. Google Now is a new app that offers a lot of useful information depending on your location, your calendar events, your Google queries and more. It shows weather reports, "how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you're standing on the platform, or your favorite team's score while they’re playing".


Android 4.1 also adds support for Google Cloud Messaging, encryption for all paid apps, smart app updates (only what's changed is downloaded), multicast DNS-based service discovery (applications can easily find other wireless devices), USB audio, multichannel audio (including native AAC 5.1), audio chaining, as well as an interface for choosing where to play media.

There are many audio-related improvements and one of the main reasons for that is a new Android device called Nexus Q. It's a streaming player that costs $299, is made in the US and bridges services like Google Play and YouTube with your speakers and your TV. It comes with a 25W amplifier, it has a dual-core ARM CPU, it runs Android 4.0 and it has a lot of ports (micro HDMI, optical audio, Ethernet, jack speaker, micro USB). It's pretty heavy (2 pounds/923 grams), looks like a sphere and has LEDs that change their color when you're playing music. It's a combination of Apple TV, Boxee Box and Sonos players, but it's rather expensive and limited.


Google also launched Nexus 7, a 7-inch Android tablet manufactured by Asus that will compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire. It has a 1280x800 IPS display with Gorilla glass, a Tegra 3 CPU, 8/16 GB of internal storage, 1 GB of RAM, a front-facing camera and it weighs 340 grams, but the device is not about specs. Nexus 7 integrates with Google Play, which now also offers magazine subscriptions, TV shows and movie purchases. Nexus 7 costs $199 (the 8 GB version) or $249 (the 16 GB version), it's Wi-Fi only and it doesn't support SD cards. Nexus 7 looks like a strong contender for the most popular 7-inch tablet and it's probably the cheapest off-contract Android device that's worth buying.


Both devices will ship in mid-July, but you can pre-order them from the Nexus store, assuming that they're available in your country. Nexus Q is only available in the US, while Nexus 7 can be purchased if you are in the US, Canada, UK or Australia. "Nexus 7 comes preloaded with some great entertainment, including the movie 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon,' the book 'The Bourne Dominion,' magazines like Condé Nast Traveler and Popular Science, and songs from bands like Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. We've also included a $25 credit to purchase your favorite movies, books and more from Google Play, for a limited time," mentions Google.

When will Jelly Bean be available? "Starting in mid-July, we'll start rolling out over-the-air updates to Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, and we'll also release Jelly Bean to open source," explains Google. Another good news is that, starting with Android 4.1, there's a PDK (platform development kit) that's shared with OEMs a few months before each Android release so that they have more information about the new features and start updating their software early.

There are now more than 400 million Android devices and 1 million devices are activated every day. Google Plays hosts more than 600,000 apps.