The fact that Google Now is a great personal assistant has never been questioned. It has been lauded by tech critics for the way it learns user’s activities to come up with appropriate cards from time to time. If it comes to know that you are away from home, it will immediately show a card with the route towards your home and the time required for the travel. If there is a chance of rain in your area or at your workplace, it will notify you with a weather card filled with live temperature and other details. It also gave information about sports, stocks and other things which you may be interested in.
But the beauty of a great OS is better app support, third-party apps that is. No company, be it Google or Apple, can come up with the vast variety of apps required to satisfy all the users’ needs. If you don’t like the default keyboard of your OS and if there are no third-party keyboard app support, then you are stuck with the one that’s not really your favorite. But if there is third-party app support, then the users can switch between different styled ones according to their liking and be satisfied with the same OS which has a not so great default app. That’s the difference app support makes to an operating system and Google has realized that. Better late than never!
So, Google has announced that it will integrate its personal assistant app, Google Now, with 40 third-party apps for a better user experience. Recently, Google made an announcement on their blog stating:
“…Starting today, the Google app on Android can help you keep up with all the good stuff in 40 different apps at a glance—it’ll bring you Now cards to help you out with your day-to-day life, giving you information that’s helpful to you, right when you need it….. We’ve teamed up with 30+ developers to bring you these and other new cards, which are rolling out over the next few weeks. Check out some examples on our site—we plan to add more cards and expand this feature over time. Until then, make sure to update to the latest version of the Google app and your other favorite apps, and be on the lookout for handy Now cards to help you with tasks big and small.”
The post acknowledges the fact that most of the useful information relevant to the users lives inside the applications on the phone. The apps mentioned in the blog include The Guardian, Pandora, Lyft, ESPNCricinfo, Instacart, Airbnb, etc. The current list of apps contain everything from news to music to score updates. With addition of more apps, we can rest assured that Google Now will get more and more amazing.
Source: Google
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