The Google app on Android handles a lot of common information requests throughout the day, and I’m not just talking about Assistant, Lens, or Gemini.
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Google’s app manages something as basic as the weather. Fortunately, the company decided to release a major update last year that greatly modernized the experience. The UI is finally modern, while the forecast data base is quite advanced.
However, it doesn’t provide the perfect end-to-end experience that a dedicated app would, and you can blame that on the basic nature of the Google Search app. When you receive an evening notification with a preview of the next day’s weather, a tap opens a Google search results page for “weather tomorrow” rather than a full-screen weather forecast. It requires an extra tap, and the mismatch between what I expect to open (a dedicated app-like experience) versus what actually works (Search) still bugs me years later.
Many common experiences are managed by special tabs that appear at the top of Google search results. Over the years, Google has worked to provide more dedicated, weather-like experiences on Android.
Share price is a good example of this, with Google last year introducing — and just updating — a Finance Watchlist widget that’s pretty good. Google is also working on a sports widget that displays scores, while already offering a floating score. However, everything, including live result notifications and summaries, leads back to Google Search.
In comparison, iOS offers a native Stocks app, while Apple Sports has just been introduced. At a basic level, they are more fluid and laser-focused than Android solutions. Almost every time, an app icon beats a search or a notification.
Meanwhile, if you look at the notifications that the Google app sends, they include:
- Deadline reminders
- It’s time to go
- Reminders of celebrations
- Travel
- Flight updates
- Account reminders
- Package delivery status
- Event updates
- Public warnings
- News and stories
- Weather: current conditions and forecasts
- Sports
Until recently, Assistant reminders were also on that list, but thankfully they’ve been moved to Google Tasks. The Google app is also responsible for Sound Search song identification (Hum to Search, which is great), although YouTube search now has that function. Similarly, Google Podcasts is on its way out with YouTube Music set to replace it as Android’s default podcasting player.
Google’s app is the go-to point for all knowledge, as Search is the company’s flagship product. It’s fine on desktop, but I’ve long believed that things could be optimized a bit on mobile. It would be nice if there were more native first-party Android experiences, and I’d also really like if the Google app/Search looked and felt like other first-party apps.
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