Hey remember that time you dated that one girl. You know the one. She would casually ask where you were, only to ask again an hour later over text, ask who you were with, and maybe ask a few questions about them like their hair color, height, and last four digits of their social security number. Or maybe she wanted to know why you’re still friends with your ex-girlfriend on facebook, when you haven’t deleted anyone since you’ve joined and you’re actually still friends with the lunch lady from your favorite cafeteria in college. Inevitably she would also spend her free time looking at your email since she secretly saved your password on her computer. Heck she might even want to know why you seem to be so into Alison Brie, and would you leave her if Alison Brie asked you to (I’m only human). You know normal loving relationship stuff, and by normal I mean completely insane. Fortunately for me, I’ve been lucky enough to not date anyone this crazy but from what I hear, I never want to.
Have I introduced you to Google Now yet? Here’s where I introduce you to another crazy girlfriend and swear she’s different. But there can’t possibly be a sane argument for dating a crazy girl, right? Under no circumstances would anyone want to endure this kind of situation. But maybe – bear with me here – maybe we’re all being a bit brash with our judgement. Maybe there’s a benefit we’re not seeing cause we’re too busy filing for a restraining order. Okay what if all that checking in, data gathering, and invasive questioning was used to help you, rather than used to berate you with names and tell you how terrible you are and instead Google Now, the new girl I just introduced you to just wanted to help you with everything you did. She never judged you, if anything she just wanted to help perpetuate all the things you were already into and help you find more things. If anything, if and when you did happen to run into Alison Brie, she’d help you find a cool place near by to sweep her off her feet, and even remind you that you’re supposed to meet her for your second date on Thursday at 7pm. Aren’t you glad I introduced you two.
If you’ve been on Android you’ve had this available for a few months now. If you’re an iPhone person it just became available to you this week. If you’re a windows phone person you can go beat yourself with a switch since you seem like a masochist. I’m only half kidding, I was on a Windows phone and they really need more app support is all. I’ve recently switched to android, mainly for Google Now. To put it simply Google Now pays homage to the days of yore when people were using homepages and customizing RSS feeds so they could hypothetically get everything they need in one place. Problem with this was websites got wise to game and made it harder to get everything you need in an RSS feed and instead made it so you had to actually go to their direct site. But more than just an homage this is actually an evolution of the idea. Being that I’m on gmail, and I use chrome browser, Google Now really grows with me. For instance I look up a song by Portugal. The Man; and next thing you know 2 weeks later Google Now is informing that there’s a concert coming up. This is the benefit of the crazy girlfriend, for one, I didn’t even know you were looking at my searches, and secondly that you remembered and did more research based on that. You’re beginning to see why the crazy girlfriend isn’t such a bad idea. To boot Google has figured out a great non invasive interface that’s quite intuitive. Get a “card” (that’s what google call the bits of information they send you. A card, like a post card from girl friend that she sent from your apartment while you were out of town) you weren’t really looking for; i.e. tickets to see Taylor Swift at MSG cause you listened to her song “Trouble” once….everyday. You simply swipe it away and Google takes note of that. Ask google the score of a game for a certain team using the voice to text search (which is amazing by the way) enough times and Google will start putting updates for that team in your cards. Go to work on a pretty regular schedule each week, and it will begin to adapt and take notes of locations so that eventually it will give you commuting updates, when you wake up and right around the time you usually leave work. I can go on and on and put it all words about how convenient and help this is, but honestly you have to try to understand. But I have one instance that might paint the best picture.
One weekend my old roommate was visiting from Chicago. I agreed to pick him up at the airport. So naturally he uses expedia to send me his itinerary. Only problem is none of the links worked and I kept getting sent to a 404 error page. Only thing I knew was that he was landing at 9:30 and honestly I didn’t really keep track of which airport it would be. So that morning I wake up planning to call him to get all the needed info, however Google had done it for me already. Not call him, but gathered all the info. I woke up with a new card and icon in my updates. It was a symbol of a plane with the plane number, and its previous flights, and what gate it will be landing in. Later in the day when he should’ve already been in the air, I look down on my phone and sure enough, the plane icon is now making an arching motion showing it about halfway through the flight, and the details at the bottom inform me it’s actually landing 25 minutes early (which me and my friend have determined that the flight from Chicago to NY must be the pilot equivalent of a quarter mile strip for car racing. Every flight I’ve ever taken from there; the pilot’s always are excited to inform us that we’ll be landing early, and they fly right through any turbulence or fog without a care and just keep the safety belt on for the entirety of the trip).
In the end I’ve been using Google Now for about 3 months and honestly I can’t go back. Sure I’m a bit worried my data is being stored somewhere and some how it will be used to harm me. But I’ve actually realized that’s probably happening anyways. If I’m doomed to date a crazy girlfriend, she mine as well use her abilities, to make my life easier.
About Matt Cargile
Matt Cargile is the Editor in Chief of rookerville.com. He also works in finance, but refuses to read any news printed on pink paper. He is a child at heart with adult means. His childhood dream was to either become a magician or the leader of the next great empire and somehow both these things make complete sense. He's contradictory in nature, but is always consistent.
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