Google Now Points To Future Of Mobile by Fritz Nelson,Vice President, Editorial Director InformationWeek Business Technology Network

Photo: Fritz Nelson

Fritz Nelson writes, "I've been testing Google Now for a few weeks on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 tablet. Search innovation is alive and well."

Armed with your mobile phone you are now a mobile sensor, careening along your footpath, reading your email, consuming your information, enriching your journey with timely recommendations as you dodge passersby. Tap. Swipe. Pinch. Zoom. Learn of the world.

And the world quietly learns about you, at least as organized by Google.

Don't be frightened. Soon you won't be wondering what else you can do with your phone, you'll be amazed by what it does for you.

At least that's the promise of GoogleNow.

Google Now is more of a mobile experience than an application, more of a search service than a search action. It could well redefine mobile search.

Certainly its name betrays its ambition.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For starters, Google Now is still learning. It gets some things right, and some things oddly wrong. In that sense, it's more like Google Soon than Google Now.

Google Knowledge Graph


I've been testing Google Now for a few weeks on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 tablet. Google Now is part of Jelly Bean, the newest version of Google's mobile
Android operating system.

Introducing the Knowledge Graph



It’s powered by Google's Knowledge Graph, unveiled a few months ago. As Google puts it, the Knowledge Graph creates connections between objects (entities) based on observed relationships and patterns--observed, that is, through Google Search.

(Fast Company offers up some insight into Google Knowledge Graph, while Mashable has some excellent insights into how Knowledge Graph could change the future of search.)
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Source: InformationWeek and The Google Channel (YouTube)