Google Search App, the Android KitKat Launcher

Ron Amadeo from Ars Technica noticed last week that Google's KitKat launcher is actually an extension of the Google Search app. "While developing KitKat, Google made a very interesting decision: rather than graft a few new search UI pieces onto the home screen, Google threw the existing home app in the trash and turned all home screen functionality over to the Google Search app."

It turns out that the launcher is powered by the Google Search app and it doesn't work if you disable the app. This is not unexpected: two of the standard features of the Nexus home screen are added by the Google Search app: the Google search bar and the swipe up gesture for Google Now. KitKat brings support for the "OK Google" hotword, so you can trigger Google Voice Search without pressing a button, and adds a new gesture for Google Now: swipe right.

I installed the updated Google Search app and the launcher on an old Galaxy S2 using the instructions from Phandroid.com. I must say that the experience is completely different from Jelly Bean: the app launcher no longer includes widgets and it looks more crowded, the entire launcher can be managed from the Google Search app.

The full-screen Now widget can only be removed if you disable Google Now in the settings or if you install a different launcher.

You can no longer disable and customize cards from the settings. Google opted for a simplified customization feature:

You can now add as many shortcuts and widgets as you want because the number of screens is unlimited. The screens are added and removed dynamically, just like in iOS. You add a new one by dropping a shortcut or a widget and you remove it by deleting all the shortcuts and widgets or dragging them to other screens.

The home screen includes a search box, a Voice Search button, hotword support for Voice Search and a Google Now screen. These are the main features of the Google Search app, so you'll use it without opening it. Removing friction and making the experience more seamless will encourage more people to use Google Now.

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Google Now Updates for Notable People

After adding support for reminders about the latest releases from your favorite music artists and actors, Google Now lets you subscribe to updates when you search for notable people. Just click "Keep me updated" in the Knowledge Graph card from Google's search results page and you'll get the latest news articles about that person in Google Now.

Google Now also shows cards for "breaking news and other developing stories you may be interested in", based on your web history.

It's not clear if the new updates feature will replace the reminders feature. Right now, a search for [U2] shows "Remind you about new releases", while a search for [Madonna] shows "Get updates about Madonna".

"Keeping up with the latest information about your favorite musicians, movie stars and other notable people just got easier thanks to the Knowledge Graph and Google Now," informs Google. "Say that you're a Lady Gaga fan and like staying informed about her latest album releases. On the Google Search App, search for [lady gaga]. On the card that pops up, tap 'Remind you about new releases?' and Google Now will keep you updated on your phone or tablet. Similarly, use Google Now to stay in the know about your favorite athletes. For example, search for [colin kaepernick] and tap 'Get updates about Colin Kaepernick' on his card; doing so lets Google Now know that you'd like to receive news. Remember that to use this feature, you'll need to be signed into your Google account on the Google Search App."

Well, I don't see 'Remind you about new releases?' when searching for [Lady Gaga].

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Knowledge Graph Reminders

If you search Google for music artists, actors, books, TV shows and you're logged in, you'll see a new "Remind me" button in the Knowledge Graph card. Click the button and "Google Now will remind you about new releases/movies/episodes on your phone or tablet".

Until now, you could add time-based and location-based reminders to Google Now. These new reminders are special and can only be added from Google search. You can manage them from the Google Search app on your mobile device: just go to Settings, My Stuff and select Reminders.

This feature was added last week, when the Google Search app for Android was updated.

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Sites That Integrate With Google Now

There's a long list of sites that integrate with Google Now: Air Berlin, Air Canada, Emirates, Booking.com, Lastminute.com, TicketWeb, Ticketfly, Orbitz, CheapTickets, OpenTable, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Zillow and more.

There's nothing magic about integrating travel sites, hotel booking sites, event-ticketing sites with Google Now. You only need to add some markup to email notifications. "By adding schema.org markup to the emails you send your users, you can make that information available across their Google experience, and make it easy for users to take quick action. Gmail, Google Search and Google Now all already use this structured data. (...) Google Now brings users the right information at just the right time. For example, Google Now already provides updates to restaurant and hotel reservations or flight information received in Gmail. By marking up email notifications to your users, you can use Google Now to bring them similar updates about your services and products."

After an email confirming a hotel reservation, the Google Search app shows this card. Here are some examples of code that needs to be added to email notifications.

Google Now only supports schemas for event reservation, flight reservation, hotel reservation and restaurant reservation.

{ Thanks, Florian Kiersch. }

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Google Now's TV Card

Google Search for Android has recently added a Google Now card for TVs. You tap "listen now for TV shows" and Google detects the TV show you're watching.

This feature has 3 limitations: it's US-only, you need a smart TV and the phone/tablet needs to be on the same WiFi network as the TV. The first limitation makes sense, but the other two seem unnecessary. After all, Google's app can't communicate with the TV and the TV doesn't broadcast the program you're watching.

Here's Google's explanation: "Your Android device uses the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) to determine the presence of a TV on the network and related information, such as its model and brand name. This is a standard way for networked devices to locate other devices or services on a home network." So a smart TV is required to only show the TV card when you're watching TV.

"To provide relevant information after you touch Listen for a TV show, TV cards rely on both the WiFi signal and the sound from your TV. You may need to turn up the volume for the cards to work correctly," explains Google. Does this mean that Google records all the TV shows from the US channels?

"Other cards may also appear, telling you more about specific show content as it happens. For example, they may give you more information about celebrities, actors, or other people mentioned in the show."

This is a cool feature, but I don't see why it wasn't added to Google Sound Search. In addition to finding songs, the widget could also find TV shows. Even better, this could be added to Google Voice Search.

Probably not many people remember this, but Google Video started back in 2005 as a search engine for TV content. "Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show," suggested Google at that time. Ironically, Google Video didn't host any video at launch, but this changed after a few months, when Google Video became a video-sharing site.

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Google Now's Topics Page Is Back

Back in March, I posted about a page that lists the research topics that are displayed by Google Now, but the page stopped working after a few days. Now it works again, has more features and it's no longer limited to Android devices.

Just go to www.google.com/now/topics/ and you'll see a long list of topics related to your recent searches. They're based on your search history and should only show up if you performed multiple related searches about a topic.

Click one of the topics and you'll get a list of search results that are supposed to be helpful. You'll see reviews, forum threads, news articles, videos, web pages and other related topics.

It's interesting to notice that Google uses the Knowledge Graph to generate related people, music, movies, hotels and more. There are publicly available topics pages like this one.

The results aren't always great, as you can see here:

{ Thanks, Anthony Raffini. }

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Google Now Wallpapers

Google Now's images are beautiful, colorful, cheerful, minimalist and futuristic at the same time. Now you can see the full-size scenes in this Flickr set. They were uploaded by Brent Couchman, who created them.

"Brent Couchman is an independent graphic designer based in sunny San Francisco, California. Originally hailing from the Lone Star State where he developed branding, packaging & illustration for Fossil, Brent moved to the Bay Area to work with Hatch design," mentions his site.

Update: check this gallery for more Google Now wallpapers (they're also 1920x1080 images).

{ via Marques Brownlee and Ade Oshineye. }

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Create Google Now Reminders in Google Search

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 }

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Conversational Voice Search for Desktop

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 }

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Google Now for iOS

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.

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Google Now for Google's Homepage in Testing

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. }

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Google Now Is Not Google Voice Search

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."

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Google Now Topics

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. }

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