Google’s awesome sauce personalised notification system known as “Google Now” provides some neat information on mobile phones, and it could soon make its way to desktops and laptops, as Google tries the idea out on Chrome testers.
Currently hitting the developer-friendly test version of Google’s Chrome browser known as “Canary,” Google Now notifications will now appear in the menu bar as a drop down on a Mac, or at the bottom of the screen in the Windows notification area, provided you click on the little bell icon in each of them.
If you have a recent Android smartphone or tablet, the cards will likely be familiar to you, and work by monitoring the places you go, the weather in your area, your searches, and more things relating to how you live, with Google Now’s system eventually offering you suggestions such as bus routes, forecasts, news to read, and more on the Google Now screen of your device.
Google Now’s cards have been pretty successful on its Nexus 5 and 7 smartphone and tablet, so it doesn’t surprise us that Google is planning this for its popular web browser, as it will bring the Now experience to more devices across more platforms.
That said, it’s currently only available for Google Chrome Canary, a “bleeding edge” browser that constantly has updates rolled out to it, and may crash from time to time, so isn’t recommended for everyone to use. Still, it does give us an idea what everyone with Chrome will receive, so expect this one to roll out to the regular installation of Chrome soon. Ish.
