10 ms·

Google Now for Chrome

127 points by jaseemabid 13y ago

abimaelmartell 13y ago
"Google now" available for Chrome.
- herbig 13y ago
  Google Now available for Chrome.
  - taspeotis 13y ago
    It doesn't help that the title of the page and logo says "Google now" [1] and the footer of the page says "Integrate with Google Now". So far this submission has had three titles: * Google now available for Chrome * Google Now available for Chrome * Google Now for Chrome Maybe a moderator will rename the submission to "Google now" (i.e. the page title) at which point a better link might have been this [2]. [1] http://www.google.com/landing/now/images/now-logo-active.png http://www.google.com/landing/now/images/now-logo-active.png [2] http://www.google.com/landing/now/#getitchromewin http://www.google.com/landing/now/#getitchromewin
    - lvevjo 13y ago
      How about "Google Now now available for Chrome"? (I am kidding. That would actually make more sense, though.)
      - jaseemabid 13y ago
        I went through the exact same thought process before submission. Happy that its all good now.
        brokenparser 13y ago
        I still struggled, but that's just me :P
- wingerlang 13y ago
  The "Now" is capitalised though, so it makes sense that it is a part of the product name.
  - gkoberger 13y ago
    The title was changed since it was posted.
    - wingerlang 13y ago
      Oh, okay.
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  "Google Know" available for Chrome.
verandaguy 13y ago
This is a rather poorly-capitalized title. I thought OP meant that Google is, at present, available for the Chrome browser.
- EpicEng 13y ago
  I thought I was being given a command.
jonemo 13y ago
Is Google Now a useful utility for others? I recently activated it when I purchased a new phone and am having a hard time understanding how to use it. It's showing estimates for how long it will take me to get home or to work but they are always based on locations where I was a while ago and often outright ridiculous, e.g. 2 hours 30 mins to go from Alcatraz to my home, by bicycle? The other "cards" seem to show up randomly, like the stock quotes that are always up top when I want to see the weather and hidden when I want to see stock quotes. How do others make use of Google Now? edit for clarification: I have set it up to prefer cycling, but Alcatraz is an island.
- Andrex 13y ago
  Google Now isn't perfect and does require a bit of tweaking. Assuming you're on Android, I'd try tapping on the three dot icon on cards to make sure they're set right (for instance, changing it so that Google knows you prefer driving to bicycling.) Also be sure to try the "wand" icon at the bottom for overall settings. To make sure Google Now is up to date you can pull to refresh. For me it's never more than 20-30 minutes out of date.
  - jonemo 13y ago
    Thanks for the hints. Seems like my Google Now works as expected then, but my lifestyle isn't (yet) supported... The fact that it recommends I bicycle from Alcatraz is after informing it (through the icon with the three dots) I usually cycle, so that works right, sort of. My commute is bicycle+train, which unfortunately is not a combination of travel modes supported by Google Maps.
  - flavor8 13y ago
    For me the "wand" displays 10 questions, which have a great deal of redundancy (5 out of the 10 are about the weather, for example.) I wish it would pop up more cards by default that I could like/unlike, so it would learn more about my preferences over time.
- yellowbkpk 13y ago
  For it to be really useful, you have to let Google know a bit more about yourself: you have to enable Search History and Location History. I think there's a separate option for access to your Gmail, too. Assuming you enable all this, you can get things like reminders for flights and shipments, it can remind you of topics you were searching for earlier, offer driving directions for places you've previously searched, movie times for movie trailers you've watched on Youtube, suggestions for nearby restaurants you might be interested in, etc. I find it useful, but I'm completely in the Google ecosystem and don't have a problem with Google exposing all the data it knows about me.
ananth99 13y ago
Does it come for Linux Distros too?
- tyleregeto 13y ago
  I had to enable it from chrome://flags for it to work. I'm using Chrome unstable, it doesn't appear to be in the stable branch on Linux yet.
  - ananth99 13y ago
    Ohh,I had too many problems with the unstable distribution. I guess I'll wait then for the stable build then. Thanks!
- jaredmcateer 13y ago
  It's definitely on the unstable branches. Hecka annoying because it's almost impossible to close Chrome right now without killing the entire process tree.
watson 13y ago
As far as I know, I've only had Google Now in my Dev Channel Chrome for some months. Has it really already arrived in the Stable Channel? And in that case, wouldn't that have required the version numbers of all the channels to be bumped up (the Dev channel have been v35 since late February)? As far as I know features don't make it down the channels (Dev -> Beta -> Stable) individually (e.g. by being "cherry-picked") - they instead stay within the version where they where first added.
- tijs 13y ago
  I got a notification that they were now offering Now in my Chrome browser about two weeks ago. I run the stable channel version.
  - watson 13y ago
    Apparently they must be rolling this feature out differently than other features which trickle down the channels. Maybe Google Now have been in the channels for a while without anybody knowing, just disabled unless some flag was enabled by either the client or a server. This way they can enable it for only certain users, circumventing the normal Channel release cycle. I found this interesting quote in a 2014/02/03 blog post[1] on the Google Chrome blog: "Update 3/24/2014: Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks, Google Now users in all languages will be able to get these notifications in all channels of Chrome. To enable this feature, simply sign in to Chrome with the same Google Account you’re using for Google Now on Android or iOS." This also suggest that they are using a different release approach than just relying on the release-channels. [1] http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-google-now-in.html http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-go...
jtokoph 13y ago
I've had to disable Google Now in Chrome on my machines. I check the Chicago weather where my parents live, once. Now I get constant notifications about the current weather in Chicago. I looked up a sporting event score for a friend and now Google thinks I need to know the status of every game for a team I don't follow. I couldn't find any way to tell Now that I didn't want those specific notifications and the only way to disable it was to turn it off completely via chrome://flags
- jaseemabid 13y ago
  Just swipe it to the side a few times and it will be gone.
  - jtokoph 13y ago
    This is on my desktop/laptop. I have chrome installed on iOS but no android devices. I have set to see Now appear within Chrome on my iPhone.
- bouk 13y ago
  Thanks for the flags tip!
  - darrhiggs 13y ago
    chrome://chrome-urls/ for all the urls.
- hamchapman 13y ago
  I had the same annoying outcome as well. You can turn off just notifications from Google Now by clicking on the bell icon in your menubar (if you're on a Mac - do the equivalent on Windows/Linux) then clicking on the settings (gear icon) and then in there you can untick Google Now
  - greggman 13y ago
    There is no "bell" icon in my menu bar. I get notified about the weather about once every 15 mins :( https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360199 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360199
lsiebert 13y ago
So is this windows/OSX only then?
leke 13y ago
I might have been into this, but google's new aggressive policy about making people's lives become 'open' has made me steer clear of such things.
vxNsr 13y ago
"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up on iOS or Android first." Well that's kinda dumb, what if I don't have either one of those?
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  It's not all that useful if you don't have iOS or Android. They need a way to track your location + I think they scan your mail locally on the device instead of on the server (and they can't do this on desktop).
  - vxNsr 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm mostly just complaining about their holy war against WP, I was kinda looking forward to trying out Google Now for myself, so it was something of a let down to learn Google still had a personal vendetta against me :P
Yuioup 13y ago
Not working for me. Probably because I'm in Europe.
fved 13y ago
I always found the whole concept of Google gathering so much data about my movements, browsing, email etc. creepy.
- zobzu 13y ago
  it's quite creepy.
- bjelkeman-again 13y ago
  On top of that, having services with an understanding of a four year old child push things into my information stream is really rather annoying. If I want to know I'll ask. Otherwise someone mature around me, who knows me well, will tell me, and will not be tempted to be sharing all they know about me with someone else at the drop of an invisible court order.
- chestnut-tree 13y ago
  I'm also uncomfortable with the way Google collects so much user data. I wouldn't go so far as saying it's creepy though - they don't do anything sinister or nefarious with your data, but they do have an insatiable appetite to track and record as much of your online activity as they can. They can track you across mobile, desktop and tablet devices. They have a desktop OS (ChromeOS) that potentially tracks everything you do online - whether you're running apps or browsing the web. You have to sign in to do anything - even to print to your desktop printer; all print jobs are routed through their cloud print service. Over the course of a few months or a year, Google will potentially know more about your online behaviour than you do. Google's fingerprints reach into every corner of the web - you can't avoid them even if you're not signed in to a Google account. Google Analytics is everywhere as are the many Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). In fairness to Google, they do have an opt-out tool for Google Analytics. And many sites benefit from using Google's CDNs, although Google obviously benefits too). What worries me is how easily Google avoids scrutiny on issues of user privacy and data collection, particuarly from the tech community who give them an easy ride on such matters.
  - danieldk 13y ago
    I am at the point where I am pretty much convinced that it is beneficial for me to move off Google's services. Evenmore, because the speed of pushing unwanted products seems to increase rapidly. E.g. even if I have a paid Google Apps account, I cannot use Hangouts to its fullest without also using Google+, e.g., I cannot send pictures from my Android phone without Plus (which apparently creates a conversation-specific Plus album). Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to find good paid replacements without sacrificing too much functionality (which is a testament to how good their products are). For instance: - Fastmail: it's fast, has great webmail, but no ActiveSync for mobile devices. The calendar is still beta and there is no CardDAV syncing yet. Offers XMPP, but since nobody does federation anymore these days, it's not that useful anymore. No replacement for Google Docs. - Exchange Online/Office 365: provides ActiveSync and EWS works well with Mail.app. Lync with Skype federation looks like it could be a replacement for Hangouts. Offers an online version of Office. However, my Android phone does not seem to work well with their servers, duplicating calendars, etc. Also, they miss features like sub-addressing, identities where you can relay mails via another SMTP server. And although they don't do ads, I am not sure how much they can be trusted. I am most inclined towards using Fastmail. Any other ideas/experiences of getting out of the Google infrastructure?
zobzu 13y ago
surprise! forces you to download Chrome. Of course, that could have been done as a webpage, but psst!
sferoze 13y ago
They did a good job with the website.
santoriv 13y ago
Kind of reminds me of..... "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." -Eric Schmidt
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  As deluded as it is, even honestly wishing for that betrays a smallness of character I find astonishing. You know how in ancient times people who figured out how to predict an eclipse went on to play big boy with their oh so advanced, magic knowledge, and had that go to their head? We still live in those times.
- username223 13y ago
  I had to look that quote up to make sure you weren't kidding. Schmidt is a one-man anti-PR operation.
finalight 13y ago
i installed google now for android but the desktop still don't have the bell icon...
- jaredmcateer 13y ago
  Do you have google sync enabled?
NPC82 13y ago
I do many of these functions with just the usual Google voice commands. It's not as fancy, but making it into a separate app instead of making the features more accessible seems silly.
enscr 13y ago
With the recent push (shove) of Google+ down everyone's throat, I find myself avoiding the use of Google services that collect & store too much personal data about me. I've tried Google Now but couldn't convince myself to stick to it. The negatives outweigh the benefits. Plus I love a tighter control on how my phone battery is drained. Google Now doesn't let me do that. I see an additional 20-30% drop per day with Stock Android & Google Now enabled. So long.
- cloudwalking 13y ago
  Curious what the negatives to Google Now are (aside from battery life, which seems to be a theme with Android)?
  - enscr 13y ago
    Privacy concerns. They accumulate a lot of personal data for customizing your experience & providing more contextual information. This problem has been compounded by Google using subtle trickery to get more out of you. P.S. Android phones do not have a problem with battery life
pron 13y ago
I disabled Google Now on my Android phone; it was creeping me out. Government surveillance is bad, but for some reason Google collecting every bit of information about my life and constantly analyzing and using it (against me?) scares me much more than some bits collecting dust in an NSA data warehouse.
teemo_cute 13y ago
Dear Google, Please don't tell (or at least influence me) on how to live my life. When I want information I'll ask you, not the other way around. Regards, Human Being
- lclarkmichalek 13y ago
  You know Google Now is opt in? Because your comment comes across as "Stop liking things I don't like"
  - jkdnupp 13y ago
    Just like the way Google+ was optional when using YouTube?
    - ewoodrich 13y ago
      No. It's a one-time prompt when you first configure Android.
mkr-hn 13y ago
"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up on iOS or Android first." So you still need a Google Play or iOS device to get it. I can't set it up on my Kindle Fire, which does a fine job of running Android applications when they're made available outside Google Play.
ScottWhigham 13y ago
Another "I had to disable it on my phone" here. I love to watch soccer and, once Google Now learns your favorite teams, it pushes those scores to you on your notifications tab by default. "Well, damn - I recorded that game so that I could watch it this afternoon. Thanks, Google, for ruining that for me." Yes, I know now that you can disable notifications like that but I didn't realize it until after the 2nd or 3rd weekend this happened.
Terretta 13y ago
If you're going to make Chrome a dependency for an always on technology to stay in touch with your users, maybe invest some time stopping Chrome from costing half their battery life.
- cloudwalking 13y ago
  How does chrome battery use compare to other browsers?
  - evilduck 13y ago
    Disasterous on a Mac. Compared to using Safari, you can expect to lose one to two hours of battery life.
CWIZO 13y ago
Google Now is broken. I get to work, and there is a "time to home" card, and vice-versa. It also thinks that I would like to go to work in the middle of the night on a weekend. It keeps showing me directions to places I've never been to or never searched for. Or, I arrive somewhere and it immediately shows me a card for "time to home". Even though I have a calendar entry that has a location (so it knows I'm where I'm supposed to be) and it knows how long I'm supposed to be there. There's also all sort of other idiocies. For instance I only got google now recently and then I traveled back to my home country for a couple of days. And what google now did was bombard me (hundreds literally) with cards for directions to every bloody address I've ever searched for in that country (months or even years ago). Wtf? I really appreciate the complexity of a system like now, but as it is it would be better if they turned it off. It is broken.
- psbp 13y ago
  I've been using it for years and I've either never had these problems or they haven't been so bad that I would consider it broken. Isn't a time to home card usually valuable?
  - CWIZO 13y ago
    It usually is. But in my case it's not as it shows up when I arrive somewhere. I mean, if they know I'm at work why would they show me that card immediately after I get there. It's not like they don't know when I usually go home.
micro_cam 13y ago
I was an early fan of now on android but I think i'll be disabling this as it provides only useless notifications based on items tangentially related to things i've had a passing interest in and no longer provides up to date package tracking etc. Lately it has been giving me basketball scores because I read a machine learning article on predicting sports results despite having no interest in organized sports. Additionally since it first came out I've started working from home in a rural area with decent but low density cell coverage that slows cellular assisted gps. This seems to convince it that I work at a cell tower giving totally meaningless travel time results to random hill tops. I think this is an example of a tool that was only tested by and is really only useful for people in the young, urban, travel a lot demographic that most google employees are in. I know that google considers their culture sacred but they really need to diversify at least their least their test users it if they want to make products that the population as a whole benefits from.
taternuts 13y ago
This thing just started randomly popping up for me the last couple days without me asking. I've tried to disable it 2-3 times, but like a virus it just keeps coming back (http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png). Incredibly annoying
Jamie452 13y ago
For me, I can't get Google now to do anything.. It doesn't seem to have any useful options and no way to show me anything other than the weather. How can I make it show me something else?
bgentry 13y ago
If these things are annoying you to death as they were for me, you can disable them in Chrome's flags screen: http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17 http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17 I had already disabled Chrome's Rich Notifications feature, which hides the menu bar icon I might have otherwise used to disable Google Now.
jds375 13y ago
Does anyone else just love the page design?
alexvr 13y ago
The button should just say "Get now"
jaredmcateer 13y ago
Ouch sorry was just trying to be helpful

127 points by jaseemabid 13y ago

abimaelmartell 13y ago

"Google now" available for Chrome.

herbig 13y ago
Google Now available for Chrome.
- taspeotis 13y ago
  It doesn't help that the title of the page and logo says "Google now" [1] and the footer of the page says "Integrate with Google Now". So far this submission has had three titles: * Google now available for Chrome * Google Now available for Chrome * Google Now for Chrome Maybe a moderator will rename the submission to "Google now" (i.e. the page title) at which point a better link might have been this [2]. [1] http://www.google.com/landing/now/images/now-logo-active.png http://www.google.com/landing/now/images/now-logo-active.png [2] http://www.google.com/landing/now/#getitchromewin http://www.google.com/landing/now/#getitchromewin
  - lvevjo 13y ago
    How about "Google Now now available for Chrome"? (I am kidding. That would actually make more sense, though.)
    - jaseemabid 13y ago
      I went through the exact same thought process before submission. Happy that its all good now.
      - brokenparser 13y ago
        I still struggled, but that's just me :P
wingerlang 13y ago
The "Now" is capitalised though, so it makes sense that it is a part of the product name.
- gkoberger 13y ago
  The title was changed since it was posted.
  - wingerlang 13y ago
    Oh, okay.
oscargrouch 13y ago
"Google Know" available for Chrome.

verandaguy 13y ago

This is a rather poorly-capitalized title. I thought OP meant that Google is, at present, available for the Chrome browser.

EpicEng 13y ago
I thought I was being given a command.

jonemo 13y ago

Is Google Now a useful utility for others? I recently activated it when I purchased a new phone and am having a hard time understanding how to use it. It's showing estimates for how long it will take me to get home or to work but they are always based on locations where I was a while ago and often outright ridiculous, e.g. 2 hours 30 mins to go from Alcatraz to my home, by bicycle? The other "cards" seem to show up randomly, like the stock quotes that are always up top when I want to see the weather and hidden when I want to see stock quotes. How do others make use of Google Now? edit for clarification: I have set it up to prefer cycling, but Alcatraz is an island.

Andrex 13y ago
Google Now isn't perfect and does require a bit of tweaking. Assuming you're on Android, I'd try tapping on the three dot icon on cards to make sure they're set right (for instance, changing it so that Google knows you prefer driving to bicycling.) Also be sure to try the "wand" icon at the bottom for overall settings. To make sure Google Now is up to date you can pull to refresh. For me it's never more than 20-30 minutes out of date.
- jonemo 13y ago
  Thanks for the hints. Seems like my Google Now works as expected then, but my lifestyle isn't (yet) supported... The fact that it recommends I bicycle from Alcatraz is after informing it (through the icon with the three dots) I usually cycle, so that works right, sort of. My commute is bicycle+train, which unfortunately is not a combination of travel modes supported by Google Maps.
- flavor8 13y ago
  For me the "wand" displays 10 questions, which have a great deal of redundancy (5 out of the 10 are about the weather, for example.) I wish it would pop up more cards by default that I could like/unlike, so it would learn more about my preferences over time.
yellowbkpk 13y ago
For it to be really useful, you have to let Google know a bit more about yourself: you have to enable Search History and Location History. I think there's a separate option for access to your Gmail, too. Assuming you enable all this, you can get things like reminders for flights and shipments, it can remind you of topics you were searching for earlier, offer driving directions for places you've previously searched, movie times for movie trailers you've watched on Youtube, suggestions for nearby restaurants you might be interested in, etc. I find it useful, but I'm completely in the Google ecosystem and don't have a problem with Google exposing all the data it knows about me.

ananth99 13y ago

Does it come for Linux Distros too?

tyleregeto 13y ago
I had to enable it from chrome://flags for it to work. I'm using Chrome unstable, it doesn't appear to be in the stable branch on Linux yet.
- ananth99 13y ago
  Ohh,I had too many problems with the unstable distribution. I guess I'll wait then for the stable build then. Thanks!
jaredmcateer 13y ago
It's definitely on the unstable branches. Hecka annoying because it's almost impossible to close Chrome right now without killing the entire process tree.

watson 13y ago

As far as I know, I've only had Google Now in my Dev Channel Chrome for some months. Has it really already arrived in the Stable Channel? And in that case, wouldn't that have required the version numbers of all the channels to be bumped up (the Dev channel have been v35 since late February)? As far as I know features don't make it down the channels (Dev -> Beta -> Stable) individually (e.g. by being "cherry-picked") - they instead stay within the version where they where first added.

tijs 13y ago
I got a notification that they were now offering Now in my Chrome browser about two weeks ago. I run the stable channel version.
- watson 13y ago
  Apparently they must be rolling this feature out differently than other features which trickle down the channels. Maybe Google Now have been in the channels for a while without anybody knowing, just disabled unless some flag was enabled by either the client or a server. This way they can enable it for only certain users, circumventing the normal Channel release cycle. I found this interesting quote in a 2014/02/03 blog post[1] on the Google Chrome blog: "Update 3/24/2014: Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks, Google Now users in all languages will be able to get these notifications in all channels of Chrome. To enable this feature, simply sign in to Chrome with the same Google Account you’re using for Google Now on Android or iOS." This also suggest that they are using a different release approach than just relying on the release-channels. [1] http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-google-now-in.html http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/get-notifications-from-go...

jtokoph 13y ago

I've had to disable Google Now in Chrome on my machines. I check the Chicago weather where my parents live, once. Now I get constant notifications about the current weather in Chicago. I looked up a sporting event score for a friend and now Google thinks I need to know the status of every game for a team I don't follow. I couldn't find any way to tell Now that I didn't want those specific notifications and the only way to disable it was to turn it off completely via chrome://flags

jaseemabid 13y ago
Just swipe it to the side a few times and it will be gone.
- jtokoph 13y ago
  This is on my desktop/laptop. I have chrome installed on iOS but no android devices. I have set to see Now appear within Chrome on my iPhone.
bouk 13y ago
Thanks for the flags tip!
- darrhiggs 13y ago
  chrome://chrome-urls/ for all the urls.
hamchapman 13y ago
I had the same annoying outcome as well. You can turn off just notifications from Google Now by clicking on the bell icon in your menubar (if you're on a Mac - do the equivalent on Windows/Linux) then clicking on the settings (gear icon) and then in there you can untick Google Now
- greggman 13y ago
  There is no "bell" icon in my menu bar. I get notified about the weather about once every 15 mins :( https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360199 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360199

lsiebert 13y ago

So is this windows/OSX only then?

leke 13y ago

I might have been into this, but google's new aggressive policy about making people's lives become 'open' has made me steer clear of such things.

vxNsr 13y ago

"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up on iOS or Android first." Well that's kinda dumb, what if I don't have either one of those?

k-mcgrady 13y ago
It's not all that useful if you don't have iOS or Android. They need a way to track your location + I think they scan your mail locally on the device instead of on the server (and they can't do this on desktop).
- vxNsr 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm mostly just complaining about their holy war against WP, I was kinda looking forward to trying out Google Now for myself, so it was something of a let down to learn Google still had a personal vendetta against me :P

Yuioup 13y ago

Not working for me. Probably because I'm in Europe.

fved 13y ago

I always found the whole concept of Google gathering so much data about my movements, browsing, email etc. creepy.

zobzu 13y ago
it's quite creepy.
bjelkeman-again 13y ago
On top of that, having services with an understanding of a four year old child push things into my information stream is really rather annoying. If I want to know I'll ask. Otherwise someone mature around me, who knows me well, will tell me, and will not be tempted to be sharing all they know about me with someone else at the drop of an invisible court order.
chestnut-tree 13y ago
I'm also uncomfortable with the way Google collects so much user data. I wouldn't go so far as saying it's creepy though - they don't do anything sinister or nefarious with your data, but they do have an insatiable appetite to track and record as much of your online activity as they can. They can track you across mobile, desktop and tablet devices. They have a desktop OS (ChromeOS) that potentially tracks everything you do online - whether you're running apps or browsing the web. You have to sign in to do anything - even to print to your desktop printer; all print jobs are routed through their cloud print service. Over the course of a few months or a year, Google will potentially know more about your online behaviour than you do. Google's fingerprints reach into every corner of the web - you can't avoid them even if you're not signed in to a Google account. Google Analytics is everywhere as are the many Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). In fairness to Google, they do have an opt-out tool for Google Analytics. And many sites benefit from using Google's CDNs, although Google obviously benefits too). What worries me is how easily Google avoids scrutiny on issues of user privacy and data collection, particuarly from the tech community who give them an easy ride on such matters.
- danieldk 13y ago
  I am at the point where I am pretty much convinced that it is beneficial for me to move off Google's services. Evenmore, because the speed of pushing unwanted products seems to increase rapidly. E.g. even if I have a paid Google Apps account, I cannot use Hangouts to its fullest without also using Google+, e.g., I cannot send pictures from my Android phone without Plus (which apparently creates a conversation-specific Plus album). Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to find good paid replacements without sacrificing too much functionality (which is a testament to how good their products are). For instance: - Fastmail: it's fast, has great webmail, but no ActiveSync for mobile devices. The calendar is still beta and there is no CardDAV syncing yet. Offers XMPP, but since nobody does federation anymore these days, it's not that useful anymore. No replacement for Google Docs. - Exchange Online/Office 365: provides ActiveSync and EWS works well with Mail.app. Lync with Skype federation looks like it could be a replacement for Hangouts. Offers an online version of Office. However, my Android phone does not seem to work well with their servers, duplicating calendars, etc. Also, they miss features like sub-addressing, identities where you can relay mails via another SMTP server. And although they don't do ads, I am not sure how much they can be trusted. I am most inclined towards using Fastmail. Any other ideas/experiences of getting out of the Google infrastructure?

zobzu 13y ago

surprise! forces you to download Chrome. Of course, that could have been done as a webpage, but psst!

sferoze 13y ago

They did a good job with the website.

santoriv 13y ago

Kind of reminds me of..... "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." -Eric Schmidt

PavlovsCat 13y ago
As deluded as it is, even honestly wishing for that betrays a smallness of character I find astonishing. You know how in ancient times people who figured out how to predict an eclipse went on to play big boy with their oh so advanced, magic knowledge, and had that go to their head? We still live in those times.
username223 13y ago
I had to look that quote up to make sure you weren't kidding. Schmidt is a one-man anti-PR operation.

finalight 13y ago

i installed google now for android but the desktop still don't have the bell icon...

jaredmcateer 13y ago
Do you have google sync enabled?

NPC82 13y ago

I do many of these functions with just the usual Google voice commands. It's not as fancy, but making it into a separate app instead of making the features more accessible seems silly.

enscr 13y ago

With the recent push (shove) of Google+ down everyone's throat, I find myself avoiding the use of Google services that collect & store too much personal data about me. I've tried Google Now but couldn't convince myself to stick to it. The negatives outweigh the benefits. Plus I love a tighter control on how my phone battery is drained. Google Now doesn't let me do that. I see an additional 20-30% drop per day with Stock Android & Google Now enabled. So long.

cloudwalking 13y ago
Curious what the negatives to Google Now are (aside from battery life, which seems to be a theme with Android)?
- enscr 13y ago
  Privacy concerns. They accumulate a lot of personal data for customizing your experience & providing more contextual information. This problem has been compounded by Google using subtle trickery to get more out of you. P.S. Android phones do not have a problem with battery life

pron 13y ago

I disabled Google Now on my Android phone; it was creeping me out. Government surveillance is bad, but for some reason Google collecting every bit of information about my life and constantly analyzing and using it (against me?) scares me much more than some bits collecting dust in an NSA data warehouse.

teemo_cute 13y ago

Dear Google, Please don't tell (or at least influence me) on how to live my life. When I want information I'll ask you, not the other way around. Regards, Human Being

lclarkmichalek 13y ago
You know Google Now is opt in? Because your comment comes across as "Stop liking things I don't like"
- jkdnupp 13y ago
  Just like the way Google+ was optional when using YouTube?
  - ewoodrich 13y ago
    No. It's a one-time prompt when you first configure Android.

mkr-hn 13y ago

"Before you start using Google Now on your computer, you’ll need to set it up on iOS or Android first." So you still need a Google Play or iOS device to get it. I can't set it up on my Kindle Fire, which does a fine job of running Android applications when they're made available outside Google Play.

ScottWhigham 13y ago

Another "I had to disable it on my phone" here. I love to watch soccer and, once Google Now learns your favorite teams, it pushes those scores to you on your notifications tab by default. "Well, damn - I recorded that game so that I could watch it this afternoon. Thanks, Google, for ruining that for me." Yes, I know now that you can disable notifications like that but I didn't realize it until after the 2nd or 3rd weekend this happened.

Terretta 13y ago

If you're going to make Chrome a dependency for an always on technology to stay in touch with your users, maybe invest some time stopping Chrome from costing half their battery life.

cloudwalking 13y ago
How does chrome battery use compare to other browsers?
- evilduck 13y ago
  Disasterous on a Mac. Compared to using Safari, you can expect to lose one to two hours of battery life.

CWIZO 13y ago

Google Now is broken. I get to work, and there is a "time to home" card, and vice-versa. It also thinks that I would like to go to work in the middle of the night on a weekend. It keeps showing me directions to places I've never been to or never searched for. Or, I arrive somewhere and it immediately shows me a card for "time to home". Even though I have a calendar entry that has a location (so it knows I'm where I'm supposed to be) and it knows how long I'm supposed to be there. There's also all sort of other idiocies. For instance I only got google now recently and then I traveled back to my home country for a couple of days. And what google now did was bombard me (hundreds literally) with cards for directions to every bloody address I've ever searched for in that country (months or even years ago). Wtf? I really appreciate the complexity of a system like now, but as it is it would be better if they turned it off. It is broken.

psbp 13y ago
I've been using it for years and I've either never had these problems or they haven't been so bad that I would consider it broken. Isn't a time to home card usually valuable?
- CWIZO 13y ago
  It usually is. But in my case it's not as it shows up when I arrive somewhere. I mean, if they know I'm at work why would they show me that card immediately after I get there. It's not like they don't know when I usually go home.

micro_cam 13y ago

I was an early fan of now on android but I think i'll be disabling this as it provides only useless notifications based on items tangentially related to things i've had a passing interest in and no longer provides up to date package tracking etc. Lately it has been giving me basketball scores because I read a machine learning article on predicting sports results despite having no interest in organized sports. Additionally since it first came out I've started working from home in a rural area with decent but low density cell coverage that slows cellular assisted gps. This seems to convince it that I work at a cell tower giving totally meaningless travel time results to random hill tops. I think this is an example of a tool that was only tested by and is really only useful for people in the young, urban, travel a lot demographic that most google employees are in. I know that google considers their culture sacred but they really need to diversify at least their least their test users it if they want to make products that the population as a whole benefits from.

taternuts 13y ago

This thing just started randomly popping up for me the last couple days without me asking. I've tried to disable it 2-3 times, but like a virus it just keeps coming back (http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png http://i.imgur.com/24QTgaU.png). Incredibly annoying

Jamie452 13y ago

For me, I can't get Google now to do anything.. It doesn't seem to have any useful options and no way to show me anything other than the weather. How can I make it show me something else?

bgentry 13y ago

If these things are annoying you to death as they were for me, you can disable them in Chrome's flags screen: http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17 http://cl.ly/image/0P393S1m1l17 I had already disabled Chrome's Rich Notifications feature, which hides the menu bar icon I might have otherwise used to disable Google Now.

jds375 13y ago

Does anyone else just love the page design?

alexvr 13y ago

The button should just say "Get now"

jaredmcateer 13y ago

Ouch sorry was just trying to be helpful