Google announces Google Now at I/O 2012

Background

Google I/O is Google's annual conference for developers building on its platforms, and the 2012 edition was where the company laid out the next version of Android. Google's developer blog, looking back at the event, noted that Jelly Bean was unveiled at the conference and that the release focused on smoother graphics together with new features ^[2]. The same stage was used to introduce new hardware and a new way of putting search results in front of people.

What was announced

Google announced Google Now at Google I/O in June 2012 ^[1]. The company presented it together with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and the Nexus 7 tablet, so the feature reached the public as part of a package that also contained a new system release and a new device ^[1]. On its developer blog, Google described Google Now as a new search experience on Android that brings users the information they need ^[2].

The card, and the missing query

According to Google, Google Now would surface cards such as weather, traffic and sports scores without the user searching for them ^[1]. A card here means a single, self-contained block of information placed on the screen, in contrast to a ranked list of links that a person has to read through and choose from. The claim that mattered was about the absence of a query: the information is meant to appear before anyone types into a search box. Suppose someone is about to leave the house in the morning; on this description they would not have to ask about the weather first, because a block of weather information would already be waiting on the screen.

Weather, traffic and sports scores share a property that makes them the natural examples: they are tied to a particular place and a particular moment, and they go stale quickly. That is the kind of information a person is most likely to want at the instant it changes.

Timing

Google said the first over-the-air updates carrying Jelly Bean would begin in mid-July 2012 ^[1]. An over-the-air update is one delivered to a device wirelessly rather than by connecting it to a computer, and it is how most Android system upgrades reach phones and tablets. The date is worth keeping in mind when reading the announcement: the software described on stage was not on existing devices on the day it was shown.

How it was positioned

The wording on the developer blog is worth noticing. Google filed Google Now under search, not under notifications and not under a separate assistant product ^[2]. Its description put the weight on bringing users the information they need, which means the device is doing the deciding about what appears and when. The announcement therefore set out a claim that use would test rather than settle on the spot: whether the cards shown are the ones a person would otherwise have gone looking for. The framing also places the feature close to the company's main line of work, search, at a moment when the way people reached search results was expanding beyond a typed query.