Google News offers a neat feature called ‘full coverage’ that bundles all news coverage related to a story – including breaking news, opinions, and featured articles – into a single feed for a more exhaustive overview. I personally find this feature particularly useful when I want to see different takes on an event in a single place. Now, the company is bringing that experience to Google Search on mobile as well.
Starting today, users will now be able to see the full coverage of a topic with Google Search on mobile devices. When you search for a topic that is making waves, you will see a “More news on…” option just below the news carousel that appears at the top of the search results.
“With this launch, we’re introducing new technology that is able to detect long-running news stories that span many days, like the Super Bowl, to many weeks or months like the COVID-19 pandemic. We then organize the Full Coverage page to help people easily find top news along with additional content like explainers and local coverage that are helpful to understanding these complex stories.”
The Full Coverage experience for Google Search on mobile devices is currently limited to the English language content for users based in the US only. However, the company has promised to expand support for it to other regions as well, and adding support for more languages too.
On desktop though, if you search a topic, you will see a ‘View All’ button below the news carousel. And if you tap on it, it opens a vertically scrolling feed of all the coverage around that topic by switching to the dedicated news section. Google originally launched Full Coverage back in May of 2018 with the intention of providing a full picture to a news event by giving users access to a wider coverage from varied sources and viewpoints.
When it comes to finding information on the web, Google Search is the primary source for a majority of internet users. While information is readily available in pages upon pages of search results, it takes another search for users to find information about the source to assess its credibility and determine if the information is trustworthy or not. Google is removing the hassle of that second step by adding a new ‘About this result’ tool to Google Search.
‘About this result’ starts rolling out today in the US on mobile, desktop and Google app on Android
Now, when users search something and open a Search results page, they will see a menu button (three-dot icon) that can be clicked (or tapped) to bring up the ‘About this result’ information box that will contain a brief introduction of that source/website pulled from Wikipedia. And in case the source doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, Google will pull up other useful information such as when that website was first indexed to provide users some background about it.
For search results such as job listings, the ‘About this result’ tool will specify if it is a paid ad or if the listing has been pulled from an organic search query. Users will also be able to verify if the source follows the HTTPS protocol, ensuring that the particular webpage is secure and safe to visit. There will also be two buttons at the bottom – the first one will take users directly to the privacy settings page, while the other one will provide an overview of how Search works.
“With this additional context, you can make a more informed decision about the sites you may want to visit and what results will be most useful for you,” Google says in its blog post. The ‘About this result’ feature will begin appearing for users starting today in the US on mobile, desktop, as well as the Google app on Android. But given how useful the new Search tool is, the company might soon expand to it other regions and platforms too.
In a bid to lend support to the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign, Google has today announced that it will open some of its buildings, open spaces, and parking lots to be used as vaccination sites. The company is joining hands with health care provider One Medical and public health authorities for turning some of its sites into vaccination spots, starting with Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area in California, Kirkland in Washington and New York City, with plans of expanding the initiative to a national scale.
Google is pledging $150 million towards vaccine education and equitable distribution
Google CEO Satya Nadella mentioned in a blog postthat the company is setting aside an amount of $150 million that will go towards promoting vaccine education and ensuring equitable distribution. “Today, we’re announcing an additional $100 million in ad grants for the CDC Foundation, the World Health Organization, and nonprofits around the globe. We’ll invest another $50 million in partnership with public health agencies to reach underserved communities with vaccine-related content and information,” Nadella wrote.
Google Maps and Search will help with the vaccination drive
The search giant has also announced that in the coming weeks, Google Maps will show COVID-19 vaccination locations, and the same will be available via Search as well. Vaccination spots will first start appearing on Google Maps for Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, with additional states set to join the list soon. Following is an image that shows how vital information about COVID-19 vaccination will be accessible on Search as well as Google Maps:
Image: Google
Users will also get information such as the requirement for an appointment prior to getting vaccinated, if they qualify to be in the group that is eligible for vaccination in that phase, and more. Furthermore, the company plans to launch a “Get The Facts” initiative that will help users get access to authoritative information from reliable sources about vaccination across its Search platform as well as YouTube.
Google is giving the search experience on mobile devices some aesthetic upgrades. Actually, the changes are quite minor, but they are said to retain the familiarity aspect with Google’s signature design language while also making tweaks such as updated font, more subtle use of colors, and putting the important information at the center so that users can easily find it. Starting with the font, it will now look similar to what you see by default on Android devices and across products such as Gmail, adding a dash of consistency to the whole design language.
Bigger and bolder text in a familiar Google font
“It’s about simplifying the experience and getting people to the information they’re looking for as clearly and quickly as possible,” said Google designer Aileen Cheng who led the design refresh initiative. Coming to the fresh Search experience on mobile, users will come across bigger and bolder text that is easier to read and understand the importance of each element. Here’s a side by side comparison of the new vs old search experience on mobile:
Being referred to as ‘a new edge-to-edge results design’ for Search on mobile devices, Google’s design team is also cutting down on the use of shadows, allowing the content to take center stage rather than making users struggle to find the main information. “They weren’t quite right, though, and ultimately the team focused on centering content and images against a clean background and using color more intentionally to guide the eye to important information without being overwhelming or distracting,” the blog post added.
Overall, it appears that the new search experience for mobile devices is focusing on introducing some design consistency and reducing distracting elements to put the useful information easier to find – without sacrificing the familiarity aspect of Google Search, that is. The new design language for Google Search on mobile will start appearing for users in the coming days.
The Samsung Galaxy S20+, OnePlus 7T and more devices are on sale today
The official news today, as per usual, begin with deals, since you know we don’t need Prime Day scout things out for you. Let’s end the week with the Galaxy S20+ which is still $201 off, that leaves the entry level variant for $998 shipped. Moving on, the OnePlus 7T which is still a pretty solid phone is available for $200 off at B&H, this leaves the 128GB variant for $399 in Glacier Blue. Finally, the previous generation iPad Pro is currently $289 off, this leaves the Wi-Fi only, 1TB variant for $910 shipped and honestly, that’s a pretty good deal for the storage. We also have deals on Motorola phones, Sennheiser Earbuds and more in the links in the description.
Alright, this is not an April joke, I promise. See while carriers are trying to deploy 5G and trying to give us decent LTE speeds here on Earth, it looks like Nokia is trying to put 4G on the moon. Yeah you heard that right. This plan apparently started back in 2018 and now, NASA just gave Nokia $14.1M to help achieve this. The project involves Nokia building a 4G cellular communication network on the moon, which would help for lunar surface research missions. NASA hopes that this new system can support lunar surface communications at greater distances, increase speeds and provide more reliability than the current standards. Honestly, we’re just covering because it’s pretty cool but, let’s see how it pans out.
Google Search, Lens, and Maps get new features to make your pandemic life easier
Now let’s talk about Google as, the company surprised us with their “Search On” Event yesterday which focused mainly on the improvements coming to Google Search and more. Some of the updates they announced include new shortcuts for Google Lens that appear on both the Google App and Chrome for Android. Google is also significantly improving the “Did You Mean” spell correction on Google Search with their BERT neural network. Search will now be able to show you cars inside and out by using the same technology they use for their 3D animals and cellular models. Another cool feature is letting you Hum to Search, for those of you that didn’t get to Shazam the song while it was playing but you still have the melody stuck in your head. Of course, this is just a quick recap of what Google showed but, if you want more technical details make sure to check the links in the description.
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei confirms departure from the company
Let’s move on to OnePlus as, the company has been in the spotlight a lot this week, first with the reports of Carl Pei leaving, then the event and of course the teasers they put out afterwards. But now it’s finally official, Carl Pei put out a statement earlier today where he confirmed that he is leaving the company. He talked about his 7 year journey with the company, his growth and how he is looking forward to take some time off to decompress and catch up with his family and friends, after that he will follow his heart on to what’s next. All of the rumors point to him moving on to create his own venture so again, we wish you the best in your future endeavors Carl.
Samsung Galaxy S21 may launch sooner than expected
Now let’s talk Samsung as the company usually releases their smartphones on February and maybe even March but, apparently this may not be the case for the S21. There’s been several rumors that we’ll be getting this phone earlier next year and it might just be true. According to Sam Mobile’s sources, due to unforeseen circumstances, it has been decided that there will be a late January or pretty early February, 2021 release. Multiple reports suggest that Samsung’s suppliers have begun mass production for different components of the S21 which also hints to that earlier release. On another note, the S21 just went through a 3C certification, showing the model number, the fact that it brings 25W fast charging and a battery rated at 3880 mAh which pretty much means 4000 and we had seen before. So yeah, it’s pretty early and all things might change but, it looks like we’re getting Galaxies early.
Story of the day:
Apple iPad Air 4th Gen is now available to pre-order starting today
Apple’s ARM-powered Mac could debut on November 17
Apple might finally launch the AirPods Studio in March next year
And finally, the hottest news today has to do with Apple. Yes, today was pre-orders day for the iPhones and the iPad Air, managed to get all of them, but wait, there’s more. Jon Prosser was busy yesterday as he shared a lot of leaks of what to expect from Apple in the coming weeks. He started off by showing a screenshot from Best Buy Canada where the iPad Air is listed to come out on October 23rd, like he predicted earlier and which we covered yesterday and became a reality today. After that he mentioned that sadly, we won’t be getting an Apple TV this year despite all of the other leaks we’ve had. Moving on to something I am pretty interested on, he said that there will be a November Event, specifically for the ARM Macs. According to his sources the event could happen on November 17th with the teaser for it coming out on the 10th. And to conclude Prosser’s leak bomb, he claims that Apple’s next Event after November will happen on March 16th, 2021, with the headliner for that being the AirPods Studio. Oh but we’re not done, Love to dream tweeted out MESA UTS for iPhone, of course we needed a translation to that and Prosser replied with saying “Mesa means Touch ID” and uts means under the screen. So that feature might still make it to an iPhone, but we just wonder what year
Google’s Search On live event was quite a busy one. The company introduced a slew of cool new features such as ‘hum to search’ for discovering songs and meaningful upgrades for Google Lens, Search, and Maps. A majority of the features announced by Google somehow touch upon the aspects of life that have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and sound really helpful. So, let’s quickly recap the most important ones:
Google Maps will keep you safe and prepared
The ‘busyness’ feature on Google Maps shows how busy a place is at a given time or day of the week, helping users accordingly plan their visit to avoid crowded space, something that is of vital importance in the battle against a deadly pandemic. Google says it will increase the coverage of live busyness information to more areas such as beaches, pharmacies, and grocery stores among others, while also expanding its reach by five times.
Plus, busyness information will now be shown directly on Google Maps without even searching for a place, and while on the move as well. This feature will soon be available on Android, iOS, and desktop. In addition to real-time busyness information, users can also see a graph of how busy a place usually is over the course of a week.
Additionally, Google Maps will also show information about the health and safety precautions that are undertaken at a restaurant or shop. This information is contributed by businesses listed on Google Maps, but users will soon be able to add their personal experiences as well.
Lastly, users across the world will soon be able to use the Live View augmented reality feature to find more information about a place, such as when it opens, the busyness status, its star rating, and the safety measures it has put in place. All you have to do is just open Live View, point to a shop or building, and tap on the icon above it.
A smarter search experience
Google has announced that BERT language understanding is now used to process all search queries made in the English language. Plus, Google search now relies on a new spelling algorithm that can detect grammar and spelling errors more efficiently. As a result, it can find the right search results users are looking for.
Google search is also making it easier for users to find answers to questions that require some explanation. To do so, Google search now indexes individual passages on a webpage too, in addition to the webpage itself. Doing so will make it easier for the search algorithms to understand the relevancy of each passage and accordingly bring up results that can answer users’ queries.
Google has also started testing a new technology that will help users quickly find a particular moment or segment in a video they are looking for. AI algorithms will automatically recognize key moments in a video and will accordingly tag them, somewhat like chapters in YouTube videos. For example, a baseball match video will be labeled with time markers for moments such as home run and strikeout.
Google Lens is now even better
Google Lens is already capable of doing a lot of cool things such as recognizing objects, extracting text from photos, identifying codes, and a lot more. It is now getting even better, especially when it comes to education. Google Lens can now identify mathematics or science problems, and will accordingly show step-by-step solutions and guides to help students. This capability can be accessed from the Google app’s search bar on Android and iOS.
Another cool trick that is coming to Google Lens is an easier shopping experience, thanks to Style Engine technology. Now, when users long-press on an image while viewing it in the Google app or Chrome browser on Android(coming soon to the Google app on iOS too), Google Lens will show matching items listed on e-commerce platforms so that users can easily find more information or purchase them.
Google has today made a slew of announcements as part of its Search On event, ranging from improvements to its bread-and-butter Search engine and new learning tools for students to multiple Google Maps enhancements and useful smart device tricks. However, the one that really caught my attention was a new Google Search feature that will let you discover ‘that one song’ whose title or lyrics you don’t remember. All you have to do is just hum the song and Google Search will do the rest.
Yes, it's that simple And, it works!
Aside from humming a song, you can whistle it out or simply sing that one line you remember in melody. You can perform the ‘hum search’ in the latest version of the Google app or simply do it with the search widget on your phone’s home screen. Alternatively, summon the Google Assistant with a voice command and say “What’s that song?” Once it opens a blank equalizer window, start humming (or whistling, or singing) for around 10-15 seconds. Google Search will do will take it from there.
'Hum search' supports more than 20 languages on Android
This feature currently supports more than 20 languages on the Android platform, but it is limited to only the English language on iOS. I whistled a couple of songs in English, tried a few classics in Urdu and Hindi languages, and even hummed a Persian song. And each time, the result was 100 percent accurate. Do keep in mind that Google Search will present with you with more than one result, so you have to listen to each and find the one that your ears are longing to hear. In my experience, the one at the top is almost always the right one.
Once you see the song list, you can tap on it to see more details such as artist name, view the official video, find its lyrics, and more information on Google Search. Google has employed Machine Learning to bring this new feature to life and explains that a song’s melody acts as its fingerprint. Once you hum or whistle, the Machine Learning models use the voice data to match it with the fingerprint, helping users discover the right song. And all that fingerprint matching happens in real-time as you hum from the depths of your heart.
Google introduced Activity Cards last year to help users pick up where they left off while doing a search for a topic or product. The search giant is now updating the activity cards to make it easier for users to find their favorite recipes, look for job openings and buy a product while hunting for them on Search.
Starting with jobs, the Activity card will now show users new job postings relevant to their query via a dedicated button that tells how many jobs have been added in a particular interval. This will help users only look at the new opportunities rather than having to scroll past all the older job postings they’ve already seen. Coming to recipes, the Activity Cards in Search will now show the related recipes that users have recently visited, complete with thumbnails to make it easier to spot them.
“With the shopping activity card, Search will show you products you’ve been researching, even if they were featured in an article you were reading,” says Google. This approach will help users quickly make a decision by going through and comparing the products they intend to buy.
While the pandemic is still far from over, several countries around the world are begining to reopen this summer. After staying home for about more than five months, it looks like people want to go on vacations. Google says it is seeing more searches for places to go on vacation. Hence, it is adding a few updates to its travel searches.
Google is adding information about travel resuming in a specific destination on Google Search. The users will see the percentage of open hotels with availability and flights operating at the city or county level based on Google Flights and Hotels data from the previous week. Links to additional local resources, including the number of COVID-19 cases, are provided as well. The feature will roll out within a week.
Google
The company is making it easier for you to find hotels and vacation rentals with refundable rates. Search for a hotel, and later this month a vacation rental, on google.com/travel and filter to see only rooms or properties with free cancellation policies. You can tap on a specific listing to see more details.
Google Search lets you see a wide variety of 3D animals with the magic of augmented reality (AR). The search giant has now announced that it is adding 10 species of dinosaurs to the list, ranging from the terrifying T-Rex to the magnificent Brachiosaurus in your living room (if it fits) or neighborhood, complete with sounds of its roaring and footsteps.
All you have to do is search the name of a dinosaur species on your smartphone, scroll down, and tap on the ‘View in 3D‘ button in the knowledge card of Google Search. You will have the option of seeing the dinosaur fitted across your phone’s screen or gaze upon it in all its glorious size, provided it fits in the space you are currently in.
The 10 dinosaurs added to Google Search have been borrowed from the Jurassic World franchise and include Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, and Stegosaurus among others. Users can also record AR videos and recreate scenes from the Jurassic World movies. But do keep in mind that this feature is only available on ARCore-enabled devices.
Back in April this year, Google announced that the Shopping tab on a search result page will primarily be populated by free product listings. Today, the company has divulged that it is bringing those free product listings to the main Google Search result page in the product knowledge panel, a section that was previously occupied by sponsored purchase links.
“Free listings in Google Search results makes your offers more accessible to the hundreds of millions of people who shop on Google each day, connecting you to more customers in more places—whether they’re across the country or across the street,” Google said in a blog post. The free product listings will appear in the product knowledge panel on the main search results page, as shown below:
Google says that it is currently rolling out the change in the US first on mobile, followed by desktop. Starting this summer, Google says all the links in the knowledge panel will comprise entirely of free listings. As for paid shopping ads, they will continue to appear separately at the top of the page, giving users an option to choose where they want to buy a product from.
Google has announced a major policy update regarding how it stores user data for its ad business. Google currently offers users an option to delete their web data automatically after a period of 3 months or 18 months on a periodic basis, which includes search, location, and voice command information given to Google Assistant.
Now, Google is enabling the auto-delete feature by default for new users. So, if new users haven’t taken any action to review and delete their data, Google will automatically delete it after a span of 18 months. Also, if you are enabling the option for the first time from the My Activity section, it will set the auto-deletion period to 18 months.
If you’ve already enabled it, Google won’t change the settings, but it will remind you about the new data retention policy via in-app notifications and emails. Moreover, Google is also extending the new policy to YouTube “where auto-delete will be set to 36 months by default if you create a new account or turn on your YouTube History for the first time.”
When you look up for something on Google search, you see a search snippet (the rectangular boxes that often appear at the top of search results) with a few sentences that might answer your query. And if you click on it, you’ll be taken directly to the source article for further research.
But as you open the webpage, you have to scroll down in order to find the lines you saw in the search snippet, or you resort to a Ctrl+F find command. Now, Google will highlight the text you saw in the search snippet so that you can find it easily in the source article. Here’s how it looks:
The search snippet, when I look up for something on Google search
The highlighted text on source article, which originally appeared in the search snippet
And to make things even more convenient, the source article will automatically scroll down to the highlighted text that you originally saw in the search snippet. Google’s Public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan tweeted that Google has been doing this for AMP pages since 2018 and is now bringing the experience to HTML pages as well.
We've done this regularly with AMP pages since December 2018. We tested with HTML pages last year, as noted. We now do it regularly HTML pages, since last week. More info here: https://t.co/z0AP78h1qH
Life in lockdown is hard. And like me, if you’ve been working from home for the past four months and have forgotten what being social feels like, your anxiety levels must be through the roof too. Thankfully, Google Search is here to lend a helping hand dealing with your anxiety issues.
Starting today, when you look up for information on anxiety disorders, the knowledge panel will present a series of clinically-validated questions called GAD-7 (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7). You’ll also find other relevant information such as symptoms and common treatment for anxiety in the panel.
The answers will be used to assess your anxiety levels on a scale of minimal to severe. Depending on your self-assessment result, you can choose to go through additional resources developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Google says the users’ responses to the questions will be private.
Google Search’s anxiety self-assessment feature is currently limited to the US only, but the company has plans of expanding it to more markets too.
Sometimes, watching a video on YouTube might not be enough to satiate your curiosity, which is why users like me often end up firing up the web browser to know more about a particular topic. Google apparently wants to remove the hassle of switching between apps and has started showing Google Search results alongside the relevant videos for your query in the YouTube app on Android.
First spotted by a user on Reddit, we tried to replicate the new feature and it worked. When you search a keyword in the YouTube app, a row titled “Result from the web” appears between the video recommendations. You can either click on the search result to directly open the webpage without exiting the YouTube app, or you can tap on the Search “(your search keywords)” on Google button below.
However, it appears that the test is being conducted among a limited number of users because the in-app Google Search results don’t show up for everyone. We also noticed that the Google Search result in the YouTube app mostly pops-up when you search for a how-to or tutorial video. Google is yet to officially detail its new feature, so we may have to wait a bit to know more about it.
