Most of Google Now’s original development team left before I/O 2015 Now on Tap announcement

During Google I/O this year, the company showed off Now on Tap, which looks to be an extremely cool use of Google Now’s information scraping. Since then, Microsoft has already updated their Bing app to offer a similar experience, and it’s expected that Apple will do the same at some point. The competition in the digital personal assistant space is heating up very, very quickly, but unfortunately, Google may end up struggling to be competitive with other giants, according to some recent news.

Just before I/O this year, a majority of the original Google Now development team left the company for other things. Part of this is because of the shift of Now moving to a Google search project instead of a strictly Android project, and partly because of Sundar Pichai’s attitude towards Now. As of right now, only one original team member is still working with the project. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for the future of Now, but it does mean that the original creators’ vision for the project probably won’t ever be fully realized.

Now has moved from being a killer feature for Android as an OS and has moved to something Google offers across all of its platforms, whether you’re on a Chromebook, using Chrome on a laptop, or using an Android device. Pichai heads Chrome and Android, and he reportedly wasn’t willing to fight for Now to remain totally independent like it started. He also likely realizes that Google needs to keep new products flowing in and improving in order to continue making Google money. At the end of the day, making money is pretty high up on the to-do list for any company.

It’s tough to say exactly what direction Now will go in, but I wouldn’t worry about the feature going anywhere. Sometimes Google just restructures segments of their products, like we’ve seen with Google+, and like we’ve seen happen with Android, Chrome, and everything else.

Personally, I only ever use Google Now on my phone, never on my laptops or desktops. How often do you utilize Google Now cards across your devices?

source: re/code

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