Google Now has opened up to third-party developers


Google’s Android search experience evolved from a plain text box into Google Now in 2012, and for the first time the company is allowing third parties to add app data directly to that interface. Whereas before all the cards in Google Now came directly from Google, they will now start showing the data from apps that you use. This has the potential to take Google Now to a whole new level of usefulness.

While it started on Android, Google Now cards have migrated to the iOS Google app and Chrome desktop browser since their first appearance in Android 4.1. Google Now is designed to bring together data on your location, search history, and preferences to present relevant information before you have to ask for it. For example, if your calendar has an appointment with a time and location, Google can reach out into its vast storehouse of data and figure out where you are, where you need to go, and what traffic is like on the way there. The result is a handy notification card that tells you when you need to leave and offers to load turn-by-turn directions.

There have always been cool experiences like that in Google Now, but they’ve been too few and far between for casual users to really get accustomed to checking the cards. You only use the parking location or news card every so often, but maybe you use Runtastic, Shazaam, and Mint much more often. These are among the 30+ apps that now have access to Google Now in partnership with Google.

Google hasn’t created a fully open public API, so it’s not a free-for-all to cram your feed full of cards. Instead, select developers have been given tools to add contextual data from their apps to Google Now. So what kind of stuff will it do? If you’re a Duolingo user, Google Now might have quick lesson links in Now to help you brush up on your French. Shazaam will have a card with the songs you’ve recently identified. The Coinbase app could also pop up a card when the value of your Bitcoin hoard rises or falls. The Google Now demo site has more examples of the new app-based cards.

My gut feeling is that the expanded cards will be great for Android users. If developers are smart about the data they expose in Google Now, you could find yourself opening the actual app less often. You could just pop over to Now and check up on multiple bits of data from different apps. That’s great for Google because the search screen is the hub of Google’s Android experience. If you want to use all those fancy cards you need to have search history, location, voice, and a slew of other features enabled. App-based cards could also serve as a collection of non-urgent, but useful data that might otherwise clutter up the notification shade.

Because the search interface is so core to what Google does, it makes sense there isn’t a public API for apps to use right now. Google wants to control what content gets into the card stack, even if it’s coming from a third-party. If it gets too messy, no one will want to use it. Maybe some sort of limited access will be opened up to everyone later, but for the time being Google is moving cautiously. The new cards will arrive in an update of the Google app in the coming days.