Free; currently available only some Nexus devices
When Google launched Android Jelly Bean at its I/O conference, many reviewers, myself included, wondered whether it was primarily a polishing of the existing Ice Cream Sandwich mobile phone operating system. That polishing, with other silly codenames such as Project Butter, made a real and major difference to the overall feeling of Android, but it was not in itself a major new feature.
Google Now, however, is a feature that was added – and it’s hard to emphasise how much of a difference it makes until you’ve lived with it for a few weeks. It’s particularly valuable on a mobile phone rather than on a tablet, which means that the new Nexus 7 tablet is the major way most consumers have yet experienced Google Now, but is not its best platform. As other devices get Jelly Bean updates, it will become more widely used.
In short, Now is the first phase of a much-talked about Google project to give users answer to the questions they’ve thought about rather than typed in, or even haven’t yet thought about. That may sound slightly creepy, especially to those minded to be paranoid, but in this first incarnation it means automatically displaying data such as about public transport, appointments and driving times. None of this is actually newly available, but it is presented in a radically better way.
So, fire up Now, by dragging from the home button for instance on a Galaxy Nexus, and the first thing you get is local weather, then in my case it’s followed by driving directions from work to home, or vice versa, with updates on traffic conditions – currently always rubbish thanks to the Olympics – and then automatic data on the next departures from my nearest major bus stop and a link to more comprehensive information on public transport and local places. Any appointments are added as necessary.
The point about this is not so much what it offers currently, but rather the future it points to: all of it is displayed automatically, and in theory the app will tell you when to leave for your next appointment so that you arrive on time or it will update information on flights and sports teams.
Much of it is not yet perfect – flights, for instance, just keep showing up after you’ve made a single search, but details on, say, the time back home is really useful when you’re travelling.
These are all services that are powered by the web in a way that only Google can currently provide with such efficiency. Others online have wondered whether this comes close to the ‘creepy line’ that Eric Schmidt has observed is what worries consumers. But done right, it emphasises the power of the internet to save users time. And it nudges towards something better, where, for instance, just as Swiftkey predicts the next word in your email or text message, Google predicts your next search. The potential is as engrossing as the privacy implications.
