Google Now: There’s A Fine Line Between Cool And Creepy
There’s something very cool about Google Now, which the company announced at its I/O developer conference a few weeks ago. At the same time, though, Now also has the potential to become Google’s creepiest service yet. Here is what it does (assuming you opt in to the service and have a phone or tablet that runs Jelly Bean): Google Now learns from your search behavior and shows you cards with information you regularly search for (think game scores of your favorite teams, flight schedules) or that could be relevant to you because of your current location, including weather, nearby restaurants, schedules for the next bus station, how long it’s going to take you to drive home and currency information if it finds you are in a different country. It also uses a whimsical theme to highlight the time of day and where you are (it showed an image of Sydney’s Opera House, for example, when I was there a few weeks ago). All of this could easily scream “invasion of privacy.” After all, this is one ...