Google is betting big on Now, even if it hasn't made much of a fuss about it so far

Apr 22, 2013 13:01 GMT  ·  By

Google is betting big on Google Now, that much is obvious from all of its recent moves, though it's not something that the company advertises and for good reason; Now is not ready yet.

What you get on Android phones is just a very early version, the first experiment. It's useful as is, but it's got a lot more potential.

For one, Google wants to make Now ubiquitous, it wants it to be readily available everywhere you are.

For that, it's building it into Chrome, there have been plenty of signs of this already, but Google wants to reach people that don't use Chrome as well, which is why it's building Now into the homepage.

This will be tricky to pull off, but it has the potential for the biggest payoff. The Google homepage has always stayed clean and simple.

Google has been wary of adding clutter to it and for good reason, the homepage is iconic and symbolizes Google, at least the Google of old.

But there are people that want more on their homepage; iGoogle, despite being shut down, was used by a lot of people.

Google Operating System has spotted some signs, mentions in the source code, of Google Now being built into the homepage.

It's not going to be on by default, at least not at first, but it seems that Google is getting closer to unveiling an expanded Now service that it’s been building for the last several months.

Next month's Google I/O could be a good platform for showing off Now for the Google homepage, Now for Chrome and whatever else Google has cooked up, though they may show up sooner.

What's curious is that until now, there have been no signs of Now for the homepage. Google always tests changes to the homepage with some users, even big ones.

But it doesn't look like it's been doing that with Now. That may be because it's not at that stage yet, or maybe it's because it wants to keep things closer to its vest and testing the new features only with Googlers.