San Francisco was home to an announcement by Google that may have changed how we interact with our mobile devices forever.
Lately there’s been a clear trend; mobile users are spending more and more time within the confines of the apps on their phones. People are spending a lot of time in digital silos. Information can be gathered without the need for content living outside our apps. The software products on your phone are not typically designed to communicate with one another. Mobile users are operating within a handful of applications and it’s becoming habit.
This is an alarming trend for Google. The search giant wants people to use their search engine to find content and interact with their features and advertisements.
That brings us to Now on Tap, Google’s latest mobile offering which will solve this problem.
The new Android feature acts as a bridge between Google Search and the applications on your phone or tablet. Now on Tap will hover over the apps on your phone and attempt to enhance the user experience by providing additional content.
For example, someone listening to songs on Spotify can get more information about the music they’re listening to by simply pressing their home button. Google will crawl the Internet and will seamlessly deliver additional information about an artist or song without the user needing to exit Spotify. Maybe you’re chatting with a friend on WhatsApp about going bowling, Google Tap can search the Internet for information about local bowling alleys.
Basically, Google is providing more content by layering itself over all the applications on your mobile device. At the same time Google is increasing their relevancy by simply integrating itself where people are already spending their time.
Google’s goal is to act as bridge and bring all of your applications together. This will make Android more desirable to many people in the very competitive mobile device market.
This update should be welcomed with open arms by most mobile developers. Google is essentially doing all of the heavy lifting. Programmers can simply continue what they are doing and the Now on Tap plug in will wrap around and enhance their software automatically. The new feature will work on apps both big and small.
Apple users will probably need to wait for this technology to come to their devices. If history’s an indicator, it’s highly unlikely that Apple will be knocking on Google’s door to have this new plug-in on their products. Most likely a similar non-Google function will be unveiled this upcoming fall when the new iPhone goes to market.
By adapting to their user’s habits Google may have introduced a game changer to the mobile world. Our devices have the potential of becoming more powerful due to the communication between
