In its early stages, Android wasn’t a great platform. It’s main problem was lag, but in the past twelve months, Google’s mobile operating system has become a much smoother, much more streamlined experience. Of course, Project Butter isn’t the only positive enhancement presented to Android recently, and the introduction of many new features and apps – particularly Google Now – have been defining factors.
The intelligent personal assistant was even named as "Innovation of the Year" for 2012 by Popular Science, and it now looks as though similar functionality could be about to be added to the search giant’s popular Chrome browser. Nothing has been set in stone, or even officially announced, but new additions to Chromium suggest it won’t be long until Google Now becomes a staple part of the browsing experience.
Chrome has, much like Android, come a very long way in a relatively short space of time, and the folks of Mozilla are desperately trying to cling on to the sizeable market share Firefox still manages to maintain. Chrome is simple, plays nice with most circumstances, and is now the browser of choice for a large portion of internet users. Adding Google Now will certainly do its cause very little harm, and we certainly hope a recent entry to the Chromium project code – entitled "Show Google Now notifications in Chrome" – is an overt indication of things to come.
As well as the notifications entry, there’s also a note of "Creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome implementation," also indicative of Google Now and Chrome perhaps taking their relationship further their current position as mere colleagues.
With Google Now currently only available to those on Android – albeit a large audience – bringing it to the desktop will increase its reach several times over. Furthermore, the inherent constraints of using mobile will be lifted, and we’ll really see the true potential of Google Now.
Perhaps we’re jumping the gun; it could just be something Google is merely toying with. With that said, it would make sense for the Big G to bring Google Now to Chrome, and if I had to bet either way, I would say the company is in the early stages of developing towards that.
(via CNet)
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