14 DAY TRIAL // Google is working on bringing Now to Chrome and iOS, but for the moment, it's still exclusive to Android. And, while there's plenty of work being done expanding the reach of now, there's also work on improving it as is.
Google Now is great, not necessarily for what it is but for what it could be. It's fairly useful now, but it has the potential to be a lot more useful, even crucial.
For that though, it has to get better at what it does and has to do more things as well. On that front, Google Now has a new data source, package tracking in real time.
It's easy to see how this could be useful, you'll know exactly where a package is and how soon it will arrive.
Obviously, this is a small update, but it's a great example of the kind of things the search team behind Now is working on and the kind of things you'll see more of in Now.
As the nature of web search itself changes, Google Now will become less a search tool in the traditional sense and more a personal assistant.
That has been the goal for the search team for years, from the beginning if you listen to more recent interviews.
Eric Schmidt has been talking about a search engine that knows what you want before you do and provides you with answers before you ask anything. Google Now is the first concrete step in that direction.
And, while it's most important on mobile devices, the fact that Google is working on making it available everywhere should give an idea of how important it is to the company.
It should be, Google Now will eventually replace search, or rather, it will become Google's biggest tool, building on the search engine but going way beyond what even a modern search engine can do.