“With more features in the Knowledge Graph and more languages, with conversational voice search and hot-wording coming to Chrome on desktops and laptops, and with new Now functionality like reminders….search is becoming a really beautiful and ubiquitous experience that intelligently answers your questions and assists you throughout the day across all screens.”

That’s how Google Fellow Amit Singhal summed up the evolving search experience at today’s Google I/O event. Here’s more about the latest features:

• Google’s Knowledge Graph, now some 570 million entities strong and growing, is taking it to the stats. Now, users will get important stats powered by the Knolwedge Graph, he said. “Already you can find answers to questions like what is the population of India,” he told the audience, “but starting today we will anticipate your next question,” which may be how that population compares to the population of other countries. So, you’ll get the answer alongside the trends line and see all that in comparison to the population of the two countries whose population is most often compared to India, China and the U.S. Google Knoweldge Graph is also boosting its language support, adding to the existing eight Polish, Turkish, simplified and traditional Chinese.
• Users in the Gmail search trial already have the capability of finding answers – like when is their upcoming flight or restaurant reservation — without having to sift through email, docs and calendar data. But, said Singhal, things can get better when it comes to letting users get those answers in the most natural way possible, which means Google has been working hard on technologies like voice recognition and natural language understanding. To that end, conversational search, already available on Android and iOS, is coming to all desktops and laptops through Chrome, he said.
• Joining conversation search is hot-wording, a new interface, or, as he calls it, a “no interface,” where users can ask their search questions without clicking on the mike. Just preface a voice question with, “OK Google,” and Google will speak back the answer to you, drawing among other sources on its Knowledge Graph for the response. Google product manager Johanna Wright gave a demo of the voice experience courtesy of Chrome on a mobile device, working her way through planning a day trip to Santa Cruz through to images of its beach boardwalk, asking “OK Google, how far from here to it?,” where Google, in speaking back the answer, recognized that it referred to the boardwalk and that here was her current location.
• Enter Google Now: Singhal talked up anticipation (it’s more fun if you pronounce it like Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number), and the usefulness of having the right answer suggested at the right time, even before a user asks. That’s what is set to happen with an on-the-way feature that lets users set reminders in Google Now to show up when they need them. Also launching on the Google Now front are other new cards: public transit commute time cards and more cards for music albums, tv shows, and video games. Google is now “even more useful as an assisted tool,” he said.

Of the new age of search, Singhal said it’s not around the corner, that it will be some time before this becomes the predominant search experience. “There are lots of complex and scientific problems to solve, but our investment and commitment to getting there sooner rather than later is immense.”

Stuart Dredge of The Guardian writes, “Google has launched its Google Now service for iOS devices, as an update to its existing Google Search app. Accessed by swiping upwards from the bottom of the app’s homescreen, Google Now learns about its user through their activities and their history in various Google services. It then serves up weather forecasts, traffic reports, boarding passes, sports scores and other information when they may be relevant. On iOS, it’s the sole new feature in version 3.0.0 of the Google Search app. Available for Android devices since the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software was released in 2012, Google Now’s iOS incarnation has been subject to speculation this year.” Read more

The NY Times reports today that Google acknowledged it had violated people’s privacy during its StreetView mapping project. Thirty-eight states had brought a case against Google on the grounds that the project resulted in people’s passwords and other personal information being unknowingly recorded by the search giant. Google has agreed to settle it by paying a $7 million fine as well as by becoming more aggressive in ensuring that its employees’ efforts don’t violate privacy and informing the public about how to avoid having their privacy compromised.

In its discussion of the settlement, the article brings up that the way now is paved for another privacy battle, this time over Google Glass. Concerns are that Google Glass eyewear also can be used to record photos, videos and audios of the wearer’s surroundings, without the permission of the individuals featured in those surroundings. With Google Glass, users can use their voice to input commands to take a picture or make a video, as well as to take steps less likely to compromise privacy, such as search for facts about landmarks or events.

How that privacy question plays out is yet to be seen. But concerns aren’t stoping the project – which was demonstrated at last week’s SXSW conference – from moving ahead. Google yesterday announced that the glasses will accommodate frames and lenses that match users’ eye prescriptions, for example.

Getting Google Glass to respond to voice commands and searches appears to leverage capabilities it has developed for its Voice Search App for Android, as well as its semantically-driven Knowledge Graph database of hundreds of millions of entities and billions of facts, and their relationships to each other.

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Matt Cilderman of Seeking Alpha recently discussed the rise of Google Now, the service’s potential, and its effect on our privacy. He writes, “In Google’s ’2012 Update from the CEO,’ Larry Page explains the importance of one of their free services, Google Plus: ‘Imagine how much better search would be if we added… you. Say you’ve been studying computer science for awhile like me, then the information you need won’t be that helpful to a relative novice and vice versa. If you’re searching for a particular person, you want the results for that person – not everyone else with the same name. These are hard problems to solve without knowing your identity, your interests, or the people you care about… Google+ helps solve this problem for us because it enables Google to understand people and their connections…This kind of next-generation search in which Google understands real-world entities – things, not strings – will help improve our results in exciting new ways. It’s about building genuine knowledge into our search engine’.” Read more

Dan Ritter reports, “Google has grown in the spotlight recently. The company pushed against record highs on September 25 and is looking particularly good in the wake of Apple’s iOS 6 maps fiasco. The two tech giants have been exchanging blows for a while, and Google’s next stab is directed at Siri, as it prepares to launch Google Now. Siri is well known as Apple’s ‘sassy assistant.’ Google Now won’t come with any personality more exciting than HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it might be just as smart. Instead of sourcing information from third parties like Yelp, it will use Google’s semantic-search feature, Knowledge Graph. Google Now will also combine the company’s legendary data parsing with its advanced artificial intelligence to predict what someone will ask, and answer it ahead of time.” Read more

The Google Now intelligent personal assistant service was introduced mid-summer with the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system for the Nexus 7 tablet and a variety of Nexus devices. Originally it was not available for the Samsung Galaxy S3, which offers its voice-enabled mobile personal assistant, S Voice (see story here). But reports began circulating this week that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will come to international Galaxy S III models by next week, and it also was noted in reports during Google Now’s launch that that service could work in tandem with other voice assistants, letting the user choose which assistant to enable.

Google Now, the company says in a video, provides “the predictive power of now. You get just what you need to know right when you need it.” Users can type in search terms or activate voice searches for quick answers to queries for sports team updates, weather forecasts, and the like, getting information back either as voice responses or as text. It reportedly gets an assist from Google’s Knowledge Graph, a database of 500 million entities, to deliver its capabilities.

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