Prior to FOX News debate, Google injects candidates’ content into search results

This Thursday, Google will have a major role in the Republican Party’s debate in Iowa. The company agreed to partner with FOX News, who will broadcast the debate, to provide real-time analytics as the presidential hopefuls are watched by millions of people around the world. Google Trends will be providing insight from the public on each candidate’s performance both during and after the debate. And select questions used by moderators Chris Wallace, Megyn Kelly, and Bret Baier will come from YouTube. But Google isn’t going to just co-host this debate and forget about the race for the White House. Google wants search results to offer as much information on candidates as possible in an effort to educate voters

Today, Google announced Search will contain real-time content from candidates during debates.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Candidates will be able to publish text, photos, and videos during Thursday’s debate to cover anything their camps feel went overlooked or missing.

This experimental feature helps voters make more informed choices, and levels the playing field for candidates to share ideas and positions on issues they may not have had a chance to address during the debate. By publishing long-form text, photos and videos throughout the debate, campaigns can now give extended responses, answer questions they didn’t get a chance to on stage, and rebut their opponents.

All you’ll need to do during the debate is search the phrase “fox news debate” and Google handles the rest. Search results pack everything the candidates want you to see and hear.

Regarding Google Trends, Google will compose a monitor (seen above) to show which candidates are receiving the most attention. Also, a digital polling station will be set up to give FOX News an idea of what questions Americans want answered.

The debate starts at 7:00PM ET on January 28 with the laggards before the real contenders take the stage later in the night. Nabela Noor, Mark Watson, and Dulce Candy of YouTube fame will be the ones assisting the moderators in asking the candidates questions.

Source: Google

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Google helps you hear directly from presidential candidates

Trying to understand presidential candidates’ positions through debates can be an exercise in frustration. You might get a sense of where they stand on the issues… or might watch helplessly as their voices are drowned out by boisterous rivals. Google thinks it has a better way to keep tabs on politicans. It’s testing a feature that lets candidates share their views, photos and videos in real-time while you’re searching for a debate. If a would-be leader has smart ideas, you’ll know even when they don’t get a chance to speak up on TV. The feature will first be available during Fox News’ debate on January 28th (at 7PM Eastern), but it’s easy to see this becoming a mainstay for future events.

There’s more. The next debate will also show relevant Google Trends data in real time, such as the candidates that are dominating searches on a minute-by-minute basis (spoiler: probably Trump). You’ll get to answer polls from search, and three YouTube creators will get to ask questions of the candidates. Whether or not you like the positions you hear, this could keep you genuinely informed as you head into voting season.

Source: Google Official Blog

Lyft taps Google’s Waze maps to make rides more efficient

Looking to keep pace with Uber, Lyft set out to improve the overall experience for both drivers and passengers. Today, the transportation service announced a “first-of-its-kind partnership” with Google’s Waze. Using the Waze Transport SDK, Lyft says it’ll make its service more efficient for folks offering rides and eager customers looking to secure one. With Waze’s real-time route updates, drivers will be matched with another pickup on their way to a destination. This should cut own on wait times once you hail a car in the app.

“As the first and only ridesharing company to incorporate Waze’s latest advancements, we can make routing and rides even more efficient, which benefits everyone on the Lyft platform,” said the company’s VP of business development Oliver Hsiang. “Lyft and Waze share a similar vision for a future with less congestion, and we couldn’t be happier to be working with them closely to make that a reality.”

Specifically for drivers, Waze will become the default navigation method with a handy Return to Lyft button for easy access to the app’s controls. Waze’s crowd-sourced traffic updates aim to cut down on congestion, a feature Lyft looks to take full advantage of as it improves its service. The Waze integration is said to happen “in the coming weeks,” so you may notice a difference in wait times with the pink moustache soon enough.

Source: Lyft

Inbox by Gmail finds you answers even faster with latest update

Late last year, Inbox, Google’s new mailbox for emails, gained a new functionality where the app would scan the screen and come up with a list of suggested quick replies. This has been one of the most talked about features to ever come to the app and is a personal favorite among many. Today, Inbox is receiving another trick in which the app can pull out bits of important information to help you find answers in no time.

The new feature is called ‘answers at a glance.’ It will be rolling out via a Play Store update over the next couple of days. Google wants to make Inbox more helpful in finding information, and that’s exactly what they’re doing here.

The feature allows users to search for key information like a shipment status, hotel reservation or a plane ticket that was previously sent to you via email. Inbox will perform a quick cycle through your emails and organize what it believes is important into cards. These cards will appear at the very top of the search results. Underneath the cards will be an organized list of email results that may be helpful if the cards don’t do their job. These will be sorted by relevance.

Google hopes this will eliminate the chore of having to dig through loads of results to find what you’re looking for. We have seen Google take a similar approach in some of its other services like Google Now. If the implementation operates well, Google will have taken another big step in the right direction. Feel free to share your experiences with ‘answers at glance’ in the comments below.

Source: Google

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Google’s Inbox app now has smarter search results

Google’s Inbox may take a bit of getting used to, especially if you’ve been using the plain vanilla Gmail interface for years, but once you dig in there’s a lot of powerful and useful features to find. (Some of them can get a little weird, though.) Today, Google is releasing some tweaks to make Inbox’s search feature more useful. For starters, when you look for something like a shipping tracking number, frequent flyer number, hotel reservation, bill or a number of other pieces of info that are buried somewhere in your email account, Inbox will surface it at the top of your search results.

It pops that info up in a card that looks quite similar to the information Inbox intelligently surfaces from your emails. The thinking goes that email users search their messages for specific info like this pretty frequently, so anything Google can do to surface that data quicker is a win. Along with the most pertinent bit of data that you’re searching for, Inbox will also feature a quick link directly to the email you’re looking for if you need to see it in its full context.

Below those quick results, Inbox will show a section of “top results,” with and the full chronological search results will be displayed below that. The Inbox team is confident that between the new “quick answers” and top search results, you won’t need to dig into the full search details very often, though there’s no word on exactly how it decides what emails to show in your top results.

If you’ve seen these features already, it’s because Google has done a bit of testing with them already — the company says that it made some notable improvements in its search ranking algorithms as they apply to email in the past few months. Now that they’ve completed the testing, these features are rolling out to all users, both in the Inbox app for Android and iOS as well as on the web.