You can talk to more and more of your tech gadgets today, whether it’s your phone or your watch or your car or your TV or … you get the point. For the Google app, that includes things like calling, texting, setting reminders, and for a lot of you, setting your alarm. 

Once you’re up at 7 am, you’ve got a lot of time to do even more. So, here are a few of our favorite new ways (some are hot off the press in just the past few weeks) to get help from Google by just speaking.
1.  Turn on the tunes. 

Whether you’re the DJ at the holiday party or just chilling by the fireside, Google can help. Ask to play music from a specific artist, for your general mood (“party music”), or for the activity you’re doing and you’ll be taken to a curated playlist on Google Play Music. Or, if you want Google to play music from another music app, just specify where (“on Spotify”). 

2.  Switch off. You can still ask Google to get things done for you while offline.

You can still ask Google to do things for you when you’re offline – or just having a bad (connection) day. Play music, turn up the volume, open apps, dim the screen, or switch Bluetooth and airplane mode on and off. 

3.  Ask Google to find and play videos on YouTube.

When you’re in the YouTube app and enable Google to recognize when you say “Ok Google” from any screen, you can use voice actions to find what you need, pick out the video you want from a list, skip and more — all hands-free.

4.  Book your holiday flights.

The holidays have crept up on you and you haven’t nailed down your plans yet? Ask Google to show you flights, destinations, and prices; then finish the booking on your preferred website. And don’t be shy — ask Google follow-up questions to compare flights on different days and different times of day.  Find a nonstop business class flight or one that connects through a  specific airport. 

5. Get things done in other apps. 

Voice actions don’t just work within Google’s apps — we’ve worked with a handful of partners this year to create custom ways for you to command some popular apps. For example, ask Google to “Shazam this song,” “Log 400 calories for lunch on Lose It,” or even “Find a hotel on Orbitz.” Hungry for more? Get some inspiration here.  

6. Get cooking.

Let’s face it: tapping and typing doesn’t work when your hands are covered in flour or pasta sauce. Try asking Google to find you that recipe you’re looking for by voice, so you can finish off your delicious frittata -- without covering your phone in egg yolk.

7. Be vague. Speak human. 

We all make mistakes, Google included. If the Google app transcribes something you said incorrectly, say so! You can either spell the correction out, as in, “no I meant W-A-L-E-S”, or suggest a word be replaced entirely: “what about dolphins?”. Talk to the Google app as naturally as you would if it were human -- it’s designed to understand conversation that way.

We’re not done building out voice features just yet! If you’re ever curious to learn more tricks, just take a look here to learn about everything you can ask the Google app. 

Posted by Steve Cheng, Director of Product Management

In October, we announced the launch of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project, an open source initiative which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. We know that on the web speed is critical and research shows that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Speed is something Google understands at its core and with Google Search, our focus has always been on getting people the right answers to their questions as quickly as possible.

For the past few months we’ve been running a public experiment at g.co/ampdemo to demonstrate how AMP pages work in Google search results on a mobile device. During this experiment, we’ve seen tremendous excitement and engagement from the publishing community and are excited to announce that AMP pages will be coming to search for everyone as soon as late February.



Since this is the open web, all you need to get started is to create your first AMP page.
Content you publish to your sites today will be eligible to show up in the demo now, and soon in Google search. We encourage publishers to get started today to be ready.

The AMP project is working to make the mobile web experience better for everyone, and it is thrilling to be part of this industry-wide effort to reshape how content is consumed online.

Posted by David Besbris Vice President, Engineering Search

Wondering if your favorite singer is playing near you? Or looking for some new music suggestions?Or maybe you’re watching a TV show and can’t remember where you’ve seen that actor before? No matter what music, actors, movies or shows you love, our new update will keep you in the know.

Starting today on your Android phone and tablet (and coming soon to iOS), song recommendations, lyrics, covers and much more are just a tap away.
And for TV shows and movies, it’s easier to explore past and upcoming episodes, get a recommendation on what to watch next, check out the cast and find showtimes near you.

Happy listening, watching and discovering!

Posted by Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager

When Google got started, Search meant sitting at your desktop and finding the best information on websites. Today, you’re more likely to be searching on your mobile device, and the best answers may be buried in an app ... perhaps one that you don’t even have installed yet. Finding information in apps is still too hard. That’s why today, we’re sharing some new ways for you to get great content from apps — even without having to go through a download right away.

We started indexing the content of apps two years ago, so that when people search on Google, they can find the best results whether they’re in an app or on the web. We now have over 100 billion deep links into apps in our index — including some popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb or Pinterest — and 40% of searches people do on Android surface app content.

But up until now, Google has only been able to show information from apps that have matching web content. Because we recognize that there’s a lot of great content that lives only in apps, starting today, we’ll be able to show some “app-first” content in Search as well. For example, if you need a hotel for your spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago, search results will now include results from the HotelTonight app. Or if you’re thinking about visiting Arches National Park, you will now find details about the 18-mile scenic drive from the Chimani app.

In addition, you’re also going to start seeing an option to “stream” some apps you don’t have installed, right from Google Search, provided you’re on good Wifi. For example, with one tap on a “Stream” button next to the HotelTonight app result, you’ll get a streamed version of the app, so that you can quickly and easily find what you need, and even complete a booking, just as if you were in the app itself. And if you like what you see, installing it is just a click away. This uses a new cloud-based technology that we’re currently experimenting with.




We’re exploring both of these new ways to show you great “app-first” content from a small group of partners, such as HotelTonight, Chimani, Daily Horoscope or New York MTA Subway Map — stay tuned for more as we expand this!

Posted by Jennifer Lin, Engineering Manager

Language feels so natural to us that we can often take it for granted—we forget the years it takes us to master it as children. It’s much, much harder for computers. We took our first steps understanding and answering questions with voice search in 2008, and the Knowledge Graph in 2012. Just as a child first talks about single items like “mama” or “car,” the Knowledge Graph started by providing information on individual entities like “Barack Obama” or “Shah Rukh Khan.” We graduated to answering simple questions about those entities, so you could ask “How old is Stan Lee?” or “What did Leonardo da Vinci invent?” We soon got a little smarter, so if you asked “What are the ingredients for a screwdriver?”, we understood you meant the cocktail and not the tool.

Now we’re “growing up” just a little more. The Google app is starting to truly understand the meaning of what you’re asking. We can now break down a query to understand the semantics of each piece...
...so we can get at the intent behind the entire question. That lets us traverse the Knowledge Graph much more reliably to find the right facts and compose a useful answer. And we can build on this base to answer harder questions.

Here are a few new types of complex questions Google can now handle. First, we understand superlatives—”tallest,” “largest,” etc.—and ordered items. So you can ask the Google app:

“Who are the tallest Mavericks players?”

“What are the largest cities in Texas?”

“What are the largest cities in Iowa by area?”

Second, have you ever wondered about a particular point in time? We now do a much better job of understanding questions with dates in them. So you can ask:

“What was the population of Singapore in 1965?”

“What songs did Taylor Swift record in 2014?”

“What was the Royals roster in 2013?”

And finally, we’re starting to understand some complex combinations. So Google can now respond to questions like:

“What are some of Seth Gabel's father-in-law's movies?”

“What was the U.S. population when Bernie Sanders was born?”

“Who was the U.S. President when the Angels won the World Series?”

We’re still growing and learning, which means we make mistakes. Ask Google “Who was Dakota Johnson's mom in the movie?”, and we’ll respond with the movies of Dakota Johnson’s real-life mother Melanie Griffith, not the actor Jennifer Ehle who played Anastasia’s mother Carla in the 50 Shades of Grey movie. (Hey, that one’s tricky even for people!)

But the next time you’re curious about something, ask the Google app, and know that we’re working hard on understanding your questions better so that we can find the answer to whatever you’re looking for.

Posted by Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager

We’re all about breaking language barriers, whatever language you speak or device you use. So with that in mind, over the next week, we’ll be rolling out two new Google Translate app features— instantly translating both English and German to Arabic and easier multitasking for iPad users.

See the world in a new language with instant visual translation 
You can already have bilingual conversations from English or German to Arabic thanks to the conversation mode or text input in the Google Translate app. Today, we’re also adding the ability to translate printed text instantly between these languages.

To use instant visual translation, just open the app, click on the camera, and point it at the text you need to translate. You’ll see the text transform from one language to another in real-time on your screen. And the best part? There’s no Internet connection or cell phone data needed.
To try out Arabic with either English or German you'll be prompted to download a small (~2 MB) language pack.

Split View translations with the newest iPads
Starting today, customers using iPads supporting Split View will be able to use Google Translate along with the new feature. So if you’re sending an email or text and need to translate, you can see both apps at the same time. And it even works with text from online books or websites.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate

We face communication barriers every day. Switching back and forth between apps and screens to translate shouldn’t be another one. We’ve heard your feedback, and have worked with the Android team to make translating text, chats, and other app content a whole lot easier.

Beginning this week, you’ll be able to translate in 90 languages right from within some of your favorite apps like TripAdvisor, WhatsApp and LinkedIn.
This update works on any device running the newest version of Android’s operating system (Android 6.0, Marshmallow). To get started, you first need to have the Translate app downloaded on your Android phone. From there, just go to an app, like TripAdvisor or LinkedIn, and highlight and select the text you want to translate. This feature is already enabled in apps that use Android text selection behavior. Developers who created custom text selection behavior can also easily add the new feature.

More than 500 million people translate over 100 billion words a day on Google Translate. With updates like this one, plus features like conversation mode and instant camera translation, we’re making Translate available anywhere you need it. So when you’re chatting with a new colleague from halfway around the world, conversation mode is perfect. Wondering which subway sign says “exit” on your next global adventure? Instant camera translation has your back. And now, when you’re sending messages or checking out reviews on your phone, you can translate right from within the apps you’re using.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate