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Google Now Arrives In Chrome For Windows and Mac

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-it-while-it's-hot dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google today announced Google Now is coming to the Chrome stable channel for Windows and Mac 'starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks.' This means Google Now notifications will finally be available to desktop and laptop Chrome users, in addition to Android and iOS users. To turn the feature on, all you need to do is sign in to Chrome with the same Google Account you're using for Google Now on mobile. If you use Google Now on multiple devices, you will need to manage your location settings for each device independently (change Location Reporting on Android and iOS)."

42 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Watch out by recoiledsnake · · Score: 2

    Google will track which stores you visit if you turn on Google Now on your Android phone.

    http://digiday.com/platforms/g...

    --
    This space for rent.
    1. Re:Watch out by mystikkman · · Score: 3, Informative

      Google will track which stores you visit if you turn on Google Now on your Android phone.

      http://digiday.com/platforms/g...

      Not just Android phones, even iOS devices.

      If iOS users open their Chrome, Gmail or Google Maps app in a store, their location can be deemed a store visit

      Even the Gmail app snoops on you. Why does it need your location? Sigh.

    2. Re:Watch out by Lumpio- · · Score: 4, Funny

      What? A company whose revenue is mostly based on targeted ads TRACKS people? Oh no! How could they do this to us!

    3. Re:Watch out by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Not just Android phones, even iOS devices.

      If iOS users open their Chrome, Gmail or Google Maps app in a store, their location can be deemed a store visit

      Even the Gmail app snoops on you. Why does it need your location? Sigh.

      Block it - Settings->Privacy->Location Services->Gmail - slide the slider to OFF to turn off ability for that app to use location services.

      I assume Android has a similar setting (it's been around since iOS 5 or so).

      You could also turn off location services globally, but that's a pain as you lose all ability to use GPS, especially maps and such.

    4. Re:Watch out by tthomas48 · · Score: 2

      It tells me the time with traffic to places I go most frequently. I find it very useful that Google knows my location, it's trivial to turn off, and is off by default.

    5. Re:Watch out by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

      You get what you pay for.

      And the advertisers do too.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    6. Re:Watch out by grub · · Score: 1

      I have location services turned off for most things.
      You can also turn off background updates for any apps, including Google's: Settings -> General - Background App Refresh
      Prevents the app pinging away and having them geolocate you through your IP as you travel around.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
  2. I am so glad I dumped Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Interface changes, surprisingly bloaty, crashed all the time... I've been using Chrome since it launched in 2008 and watched it slide from a fast, albeit memory heavy app with no cruft to a confusing, massively bloated, unstable beast that gets worse with every iteration.

    I went back to Firefox everywhere except my workstation and the change has been night and day.

    Google can suck it for all I care

    1. Re:I am so glad I dumped Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Awe, it's cute that you think people give a shit about your incompetence.

    2. Re:I am so glad I dumped Chrome by konohitowa · · Score: 1

      Apparently you're the only one that cared enough to say so.

  3. Google Now Arrives in Chrome? by uCallHimDrJ0NES · · Score: 5, Funny

    What was Google planning to wear before it decided on this new metallic look?

    --
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  4. Google Now scares the living by Rinikusu · · Score: 1

    SHIT out of me. My girlfriend uses it and, well, who the fuck needs the NSA when you have Google figuring out what and where and why you do what you do. No thanks. /neo-luddite.

    --
    If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    1. Re:Google Now scares the living by Albanach · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's a fair point, but at least Google gives you the means to turn this off. Also, you're getting something you can place a value on in return, so you can make a reasoned decision as to whether location services are a price worth paying.

      All the same data is, however, still available to the government. And there's no off switch there.

    2. Re:Google Now scares the living by Rinikusu · · Score: 2

      Definitely, at least it's "opt-in" (for now). When my gf comes over, GN is already giving her times to get to our favorite restaurants, movie theaters, etc. Don't get me wrong, progress is great, but holy hell it's kinda creepy.

      --
      If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    3. Re:Google Now scares the living by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Creepy, but useful.

      It all comes down to how much you trust Google. For me, I trust them enough. At least they show enough respect to let you turn it off. That's a lot more than I can say about the NSA. (Plus, Google doesn't have SWAT teams ready to smash down my door at 3am).

    4. Re:Google Now scares the living by Stephen+Chadfield · · Score: 2

      But the NSA has access to all the data Google have on you and the NSA do have SWAT teams ready to smash down your door at 3am.

  5. WTF is Google Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Really, would it hurt the "editors" to have some sort of description added that explains these?

    1. Re:WTF is Google Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow. We're suppose to know what every offering of Google is now? Just wow.
       
      The other day MS OneNote was the software in question for an article and people got modded up for pretty much saying the same thing. I guess that's fanboyism for you.
       
      Just another reason to dump Chrome totally... I'm sick of the fanboys.

    2. Re:WTF is Google Now? by Khoa · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's a location-driven, search-driven, email-driven user interface that reads your, well 1) searches, 2) emails/contacts/birthdays/meetings, and 3) location and delivers you what it thinks will be the most relevant information to you. Have an Amazon package? It will read your email from Amazon, parse the tracking info, and display the tracking info for you. Read a blog recently? It will display the latest blog post as soon as it's updated. Searched for "March Madness"? It'll display scores, game broadcast times, ticket prices, etc. Searched for "Frozen showtimes"? It'll display showtimes at the nearest theaters. I'm not saying it isn't creepy. But the service is pretty neat...

    3. Re:WTF is Google Now? by swillden · · Score: 2

      You forgot my favorite feature: It looks at appointments on my calendar and, as long as they have an entry in the location field which can be unambiguously parsed by Google Maps, prompts me when I need to leave to get there on time. 10-15 minutes before I need to leave, based on current traffic conditions, my phone chimes and tells me "You need to leave by...".

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    4. Re:WTF is Google Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      its after Google before and before google forthcoming.

    5. Re:WTF is Google Now? by thammoud · · Score: 1

      Just Google Google Now.

  6. Re:Hmm. by Albanach · · Score: 1

    Google now incorporates things such as your search history and your emails to provided a customized start page.

    So if Google knows you live in Atlanta, GA it will show you the weather for Atlanta. If you have a flight booked to San Francisco, you will also see the weather for your destination and confirmation of whether your flight is on time - this happens automatically if the flight confirmation went to your gmail account.

    If you search for an address or store on your desktop computer, Google Now on your phone will be aware of this and will offer directions. If you have an appointment at your Dentist in your Google Calendar, your phone will remind you, letting you know what time you need to leave to arrive on time taking into account current traffic conditions.

  7. Meh by Cinder6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google Now sounds really cool on paper, but I've never actually found it useful. I was intrigued when it claimed it would show you tracking information for packages shipped to you, but I never got it to work (Gmail cards are enabled, and I tried it with multiple Gmail addresses).

    The quality of and speed of it's voice recognition is impressive, though.

    --
    If you can't convince them, convict them.
    1. Re:Meh by geek · · Score: 1

      I always found it drained the hell out of my battery. On a laptop or desktop I doubt it would be that bad but on a cell phone or tablet it was very difficult to get through the day with it on.

    2. Re:Meh by RJFerret · · Score: 1

      I don't have it personally (lack of compatible devices), but two gals I know both have had it tell them when it's time to head off for appointments; one flies a lot, and it's alerted her with the time to leave for flight #___ that it picked up from her email automatically.

      However flying so much, she often changes flights last minute, and also doesn't bother getting to the airport that much ahead of time given pre-screening. She laughed one day having landed, turned on her phone and subsequently got an now erroneous alert for a later flight she'd previously switched from--then it was more Google Yesterday, than Google Now.

    3. Re:Meh by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      It always seems to pick up my tracking numbers ( except china post, which rarely works on the china post web page either). It also picked up all of my flight information as well.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    4. Re:Meh by gonnagetya · · Score: 1

      The quality of and speed of it's voice recognition is impressive, though.

      I actually use Google Speech for an application that I'm building. There's no official API for it, but what you can do is record speech to a FLAC file with specific parameters, pass said file to a particular URL via libcurl, and after a few seconds you'll get back info in JSON format which will provide the text of the recognition as well as a confidence level. It's really quite impressive.

      The only downside of course is that if Google changes how its speech setup works, someone will have to modify the procedure to match. And if they decide to lock down the API such that it cannot be used other than by official Google software... then I'm stuck. Unfortunately it happens to be the best free speech recognition out there, and also one of the easiest. You don't have to teach it - it just seems to work and works very well so long as you have a good microphone. None of the open source packages come even close - in fact, the best one (CMU Sphinx) seems to require you to specify a dictionary of words to match against, which makes it useless when you want to say more than just a handful of words.

    5. Re:Meh by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I have the opposite experience. I actually like having a system where if I search for the address on the store and then walk out of the house my phone instantly thinks I'm going to that store and offers a traffic prediction and navigation. I like how it identified where I was flying based on my search for a flight and then proceeded to remind me. I also like it summarises stocks I own based of flight searches, the current weather depending on where you are. My personal favourite is it telling me the traffic conditions on the way to and from work every day.

      I like it.

  8. Re:Hmm. by ProzacPatient · · Score: 1

    Google now incorporates things such as your search history and your emails to provided a customized start page.

    Unfortunately in the process of doing this they abandoned the incredibly handy iGoogle page despite much protest but Google's "solution" was to tell everyone to switch to the Chrome browser from whatever browser you're using.

    No thank you I'll continue to use Firefox and use igHome or My Yahoo! instead.

  9. When will Google kill this one? by guytoronto · · Score: 2

    Should I even both installing it? With Google's track record, I'm sure this one will be dead within a couple years.

    1. Re:When will Google kill this one? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      When Android dies off. Google so far has killed products in minor use which didn't fit in their portfolio. Google Now is actually kind of central to it. Or maybe you think they'll kill of search next?

  10. a bakini by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    and some wellington boots

  11. Re:Happy Google user. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Thanks Google, that's swell

  12. What about normal desktop Linux? Hope standards... by Phil+Urich · · Score: 2

    So it's out for Windows, OSX, and ChromeOS . . . but what about normal desktop Linux? I'm hoping it's because they're spending a bit more time making the normal-Linux implementation follow the Desktop Notifications Specification that KDE, GNOME (and its diaspora) and others implement.

    --
    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
  13. chromebook too by Barbarian · · Score: 1

    http://chrome.blogspot.com/201...

  14. typical by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    was excited to see this. went and installed the dev channel chrome to make sure i got it. started it up and got a nice notification saying it was turned on. neat. then nothing. no notifications. nothing at all.

    typical behavior from google now. the idea is so simple, but it never seems to work right for me despite having it turned on since inception and allowing google full access to my location. just *some* off the oddities,

    1. despite never, ever going to the gym at any other time then between 7-8.30 in the morning on weekday, google now insists on giving me directions at all times of the day including saturdays.

    2. despite regularly clicking on news articles and google now notifications about my local sports team, it failed to alert tell me there was a home game the other day resulting in me being jammed in downtown traffic (thanks!)

    3. the weather notification is sometimes there, sometimes now. no clue about when it decides to show itself.

    4. after swiping away sporting results, it re-inserts them multiple times

  15. I have GMail, but it doesn't show on Location Svcs by rsborg · · Score: 1

    Block it - Settings->Privacy->Location Services->Gmail - slide the slider to OFF to turn off ability for that app to use location services.

    So I don't see it there, I only see Google Maps. Am I supposed to block Google Maps?

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  16. Re:Feature Request by swillden · · Score: 1

    If someone makes me angry I "Ok Google Now" then roar into my phone and politely add "John Cramer". Then Google Now auto spams him with pre-generated hate spam.

    Why do you want to hatespam John whenever someone pisses you off? Poor guy. I feel for him on the days your morning commute is bad.

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  17. And thus the vendor-lock in commenced by tgv · · Score: 1

    So now you need Chrome if you want Google Now notifications? What's next? Some Google Docs feature that only works in Chrome? Maps?

  18. It's creepy. End of story. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Useful? How is any of that useful? If your life is so depraved of meaning and purpose that you need an automated surveillance program to tell you when to consume stuff, well... you're beyond hope.

    No, Google doesn't have SWAT teams. The SWAT teams have data from Google.

  19. Also the Chromebook by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

    The Chromebook version of Chrome also got this. Don't know when it's coming to the Linux version.