Google Now

What it is

Google Now was introduced by Google as a feature that gets users the right information at the right time^[1]. The change it represents is small but real: instead of waiting for someone to type a query into a box, the system puts weather, traffic or a score in front of them as cards^[1]. Google's developer blog described it as a new search experience on Android, which places it inside the platform rather than in a separate app^[2].

Where it came from

Google announced Google Now at its I/O conference in June 2012, together with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean^[1]. The developer blog listed Google Now among the headline announcements of Google I/O 2012 and called it a new search experience on Android^[2]. The same post noted that more than 5,500 developers attended the conference in San Francisco^[2].

The announcement also came with a measure of how large the audience was. Google said more than 400 million Android devices had been activated, up from 100 million the previous June^[1]. A feature built into the platform, rather than sold on its own, was reaching that base.

How it works

The cards appear at the moment users need them, with no digging required^[1]. Google's examples were deliberately ordinary: telling someone the day's weather before they start the day, showing how much traffic to expect before they leave for work, or giving a favourite team's score while a game is being played^[1]. What these cases share is that the user never formulates a question. The information is picked for the situation and offered first.

The same release added a second, more explicit path. Google said voice search in Jelly Bean could speak back a precise answer, powered by the Knowledge Graph, when one was known^[1]. A knowledge graph, in this sense, is a structured store of entities and the relations between them; a system can read an answer out of it directly instead of handing back a list of pages for the user to sift through. So the release covered both ends of the same idea: a spoken question that gets a spoken answer, and information delivered before any question is asked^[1].

The two halves depend on the same underlying work — understanding what a person is likely to want, and having a structured place to look it up — but they feel different to use. One responds; the other anticipates.

Rollout

Google said it would start rolling out over-the-air updates to the Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Xoom and Nexus S from mid-July 2012^[1]. Those three devices were named as the first in line for the update, so the feature arrived on phones and tablets already in people's hands rather than only on new hardware.

Where it sits

Google Now's importance at the time lay in the direction it stated: search as something that runs in the background and speaks up when it is relevant, not only a box that waits to be filled^[1]. It shipped as one of the headline items of a platform release rather than as a standalone product^[2], at a moment when Android device activations were climbing quickly^[1]. For anyone tracing how phones came to volunteer information instead of only answering questions, Google Now is where Google put that idea plainly.