Between gift shopping, traveling, and party-going and party-hosting, there’s a lot to do this time of year. With Now on Tap on Android phones, everything is a little bit easier. Today we’re making some updates to Now on Tap to help you out during the holiday season and year round.

On airport pick-up duty? If your cousin sends you a text with his flight number, simply tap and hold your phone’s home button to get info on flight status without a separate search. Your text message is still right there, so you can respond easily after a quick peek.

If you need make sure all the last-minute gifts you ordered online will make it under the tree on time, tapping and holding on your confirmation email will display tracking info for your package.

And just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean the news slows down (well, maybe a little). When reading a news article about Justin Trudeau or Ronda Rousey, tap and hold to get links to related articles so you can learn more. Plus, you’ll now see a share icon when you use Now on Tap to easily share what’s on your screen, without having to leave what you’re doing. You should start seeing all these features over the coming days.

Finally, for those of you French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian or Korean speakers—Now on Tap is now at your fingertips too. Of course, we’ll continue to add more languages and features soon.

Posted by Aneto Okonkwo, Product Manager

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

The perfect image of your next big adventure, knitting project or style-changing haircut is bound to exist somewhere out there. But what happens once you find the image? Take a screenshot? Maybe try to save the webpage? Starting today there is an easier option: you can now star and bookmark images directly from Google’s image search in your mobile browser.

Let’s say you’re searching for “bob hairstyles” on Google and an image catches your eye. Simply select it and tap the star. Next time you’re at the stylist, you can easily access the picture without having to dig around or do another search.

Once you’ve starred a few images, you can keep them organized in folders: to add an image to a folder of similar items, tap the pencil shaped edit icon. Create a grouping such as “haircuts for the winter” or “snowman ideas” and your image will be added to a folder with similar ones.  

This feature is currently available in the US when you search for images on mobile, across all major browsers on both Android and iOS. To try it out, make sure you’re logged into your browser with your Google Account; then you can start image searching and planning that next adventure.

Posted by Diego Accame, Software Engineer

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, My 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.

Whether you’re starting a new bi-lingual conversation on your iPad or using instant visual translation to find your way, Google Translate helps you see the world in your language. With today’s updates, we hope that we’re able to continue to help and give more translation options to the 500 million people using Google Translate to see over 100 billion words a day in their language.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate

People are consuming more content on their mobile phones than ever before. We read, listen, watch, play, and buy from our phones while we’re out, at home, on the bus, and with our friends. Google Search aims to show you the best answers for all of life’s contexts, and we want to help you explore and discover great content on the web. Today, Google Search is excited to share a preview of how Accelerated Mobile Pages are helping us create a fast and beautiful content browsing experience for mobile web.

Whether you want to find out the latest [news] or the next [recipes] to try in the kitchen, Search brings you fresh, high-quality content from around the web. Accelerated Mobile Pages are specially formatted web pages that enable Search to display this content extremely fast, while ensuring that publishers control the way their content looks and feels.

This demo of Accelerated Mobile Pages in Search utilizes content from a limited set of participating publishers and is accessible through the below links. We hope that it provides a glimpse of how fast the mobile web can become, and how Search is committed to making results fresher and browsing faster.

Explore and search within g.co/ampdemo in your mobile browser or follow the links below:

• [fashion]
• [mars]
• [syria]
• [nytimes]

Learn more about the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project at ampproject.org.

Posted by Daniel Rocha, Software Engineer

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.

Translating a TripAdvisor review from Portuguese

Composing a WhatsApp message in Russian 

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

It’s Friday night and your friend just texted: “Hey, want to go see The Martian this weekend and then grab dinner at The Slanted Door?” Chances are you need to jump through a lot of hoops on your phone to get enough info so you can respond: you may want to find out what the movie’s about and who’s in it, what time it’s playing, where The Slanted Door is, if they serve any vegetarian dishes and whether you can get a reservation.

We built Now on Tap as a step toward taking the hassle out of these types of situations and get you help quickly. We first talked about this new feature at Google I/O, and now it’s here—rolling out over the next few days to Nexus phones and other devices running Marshmallow over time.

So—back to your Friday night plans. With Now on Tap, if you tap and hold down the home button of your Android phone, Google Now will show you quick info about the movie and restaurant and help you jump into the right apps to read reviews, see the menu, and reserve a table. Once you’re done, the back button will take you right back to your messaging app so you can respond to your friend.

Helping you with Friday night plans isn’t the only way Now on Tap can assist you right in the moment, anywhere on your phone. Here are a few other examples:

As you read about the 2016 US elections or Elon Musk’s plans for Mars, simply tap and hold down the home button on your phone: Now on Tap will show you quick facts, and with just a tap you can jump straight to social media or the latest news articles.

When a playlist or station in Google Play Music, Pandora or another music app surprises you with a new song, Now on Tap can give you more info about the artist or band.

Once your phone is updated to Android Marshmallow, just tap and hold down the home button to give Now on Tap a whirl. It’s available in English starting today and we’ll be adding more languages — and more ways for Now on Tap to help you — in the coming months. When a tap-and-hold doesn’t give you what you want, you can easily send feedback and help us improve this feature.

It’s early days but we’re excited about taking another step towards making your smartphone even smarter, by assisting you: getting you straight to the answer you need or the next step of what you’re doing.

Posted by Aparna Chennapragada, Director of Product Management and Behshad Behzadi, Principal Engineer

Trying to remember how that famous phrase “We the People…” ends? Scratching your head over what’s included in the Tenth Amendment? Or maybe you need a refresher on how many amendments are even in the United States Constitution—or the Constitution of Japan, for that matter. Now (on Constitution Day, no less!) this information is more accessible than ever, thanks to our partnership with the Constitute Project.

The Constitute Project helps people access, compare and analyze the world’s constitutions. Now we’re adding more of this content to our search results, so you can find the full text for the United States Constitution—or constitutions from 12 other countries—right at the top of your search results page. To try it out, type (or say) “constitution” into Google Search or the Google App and a box will pop up with the Preamble for the United States Constitution and a drop-down menu where you can see all of the accompanying articles and amendments.

Besides the United States, you can find the constitutions for Afghanistan, Bhutan, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Micronesia, Norway and Ukraine. We’re starting with these constitutions and looking forward to adding more soon.

We're excited to play our part in showing the world the common ideals that tie different countries together, and the differences that make them each unique. In the end, We the People...of Google are always trying to do what we can in Order to form a more perfect Search.

Posted by Brett Perlmutter, Special Projects Lead, Google Ideas

In early August, New York City saw an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, a very rare and sometimes deadly form of pneumonia. As more outbreaks came to light, Google searches for Legionnaires' disease spiked over 1,000%. People wanted to know what this disease is, why it’s spreading, and how to prevent it. So we quickly updated our health conditions feature (first launched last February) to provide information on Legionnaires' right up front, from a simple search.

Indeed, health conditions continue to be among the most important things people ask Google about, and one of our most popular features. So today we’re announcing broader updates—over the next few weeks, you’ll notice:

• Hundreds more health conditions (soon over 900 total, more than double the number we started with) where you’ll get quick at-a-glance info on symptoms, treatments, prevalence, and more
• Visual design improvements and some more specific triggering so it’s quicker and easier to get the info you need (for example, you can now search for “pink eye symptoms” and you’ll get straight to the symptoms tab)
• A ‘Download PDF’ link so you can easily print this information for a doctor’s visit—this has been a top request from doctors

We’re making sure to include neglected tropical diseases, a set of infections that affect over 1.5 billion people including 500 million children in poorer regions. We think it's important for people to have facts on these diseases, such as Dengue Fever (already included), Chikungunya, and Leishmaniasis (to be added soon). Today the feature is still only in U.S. English, but we plan to expand it to more languages and regions.

As before, we’ve consulted and worked closely with a team of doctors to curate and validate this information. We’ve gotten lots of positive, helpful feedback from our users and medical professionals, and we’ll keep working to bring useful health information to your fingertips, whether in the Google app or on desktop.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager

Today, people use Google very differently from just a few years ago—we’re now as likely to touch and talk as we are to type. We also use Google on an endless number of devices, from mobile phones, TVs, and watches, to the dashboards in our cars, all in addition to desktop. We just announced a new visual language for Google that reflects this. You’ll start seeing our new logo, icon and animated dots soon across Google, including when you search on the mobile web and, of course, the Google app.

With mobile devices in mind, we’ve also made some changes to our search results page to help you more easily find what you need and dive into diverse content such as images, videos, news stories and more — by simply swiping and tapping.

On Android, we’ve also updated the “home page” of our Google app (which you can always get to by tapping the new, colorful G icon). On days when there’s a doodle, you’ll find it at the top of the page and Now cards will be organized by category so you can find what you need more predictably. As your day progresses, Now cards shift and change size so that the most important ones stand out.

If today’s news makes you curious about how our logo has changed over time, a search for Google logo history will give you a peek. And for those times when you’re feeling curious, we also have something fun!

Download high res images

Posted by Kai Conragan, Product Designer

Between friends, family and work, we send dozens of messages a day. But there’s an easier way to do that than using your thumbs on tiny keyboards. Starting today, you can send messages using some of your favorite messaging apps on your Android by simply talking to Google, just like you can already do to send quick emails, Hangouts or text messages.

With the Google app on your Android, you can already say things like “Ok Google, send a text to Taylor: I’ll be in town for the weekend, want to meet up?”—the same way you can ask Google all your questions by voice on your phone. Now, you can do the same with some popular messaging apps.

Just say, “Ok Google, send a WhatsApp message to Joe”—after which you’ll get a prompt asking you to dictate your message. Or, you can do it all in one step: “Ok Google, send a Viber message to Josh: let’s do dinner tomorrow night.” In addition to WhatsApp and Viber, you can send voice messages via WeChat, Telegram and NextPlus (just make sure you have the latest version of both the messaging and the Google app). You’ll be able to do this in English initially (not only in the US though!) and we’ll be working to add more apps and languages in the future.

With all of us spending so much time in apps, we’ve been working to add new ways to surface the right content from your apps at the right time. Over the past few months, you may have seen Now cards from many of your favorite apps and new ways to also get things done across your apps by just asking Google something, like “Ok Google, Shazam this song” or “Show me apartments for rent near me on Zillow.” So type less and speak more—your thumbs will thank you.

Posted by Sunil Vemuri, Product Manager

No matter what you’re searching for, you should get the best answers—whether they’re on the web or in an app. Two years ago we announced a big first step in making Google Search even more useful when you’re searching on Android: we started showing links to content from apps you had on your phone, from reviews of the French restaurant you’re considering for dinner to last-minute seats for the Giants game. Recently we expanded this so that you can also find content in Android apps you don’t yet have, with links to install apps that might have a great answer to your question.

Last week, we announced the next step: developers can now get their apps indexed to appear in search results on iOS as well. This week, we’re rolling this out so you’ll start seeing in-app content from an initial set of partners among search results when searching with the Google app or in Chrome for iPhone and iPad (you need to be signed in). From there, just tap the search result to open that app.

Try telling Google “I need a reservation at Bombay Cricket Club” and you’ll see results from the OpenTable app.

You can also search for “DIY interior design” and easily explore pinboards on Pinterest. Try “buy Giants tickets” for results including one from the SeatGeek app, or even ask “what is the definition of googol” and see results from The Free Dictionary.

This is a small first step, with links to just a handful of apps: Eat24, Free Dictionary, Huffington Post, OpenTable, Pinterest, SeatGeek, Slideshare, Tapatalk, Yellow Pages, YouTube and Zillow in the U.S., Biblia JFA Offline and Letras in Brazil, Cookpad and Tabelog in Japan, Domain in Australia, and eBay Kleinanzeigen in Germany. Of course, we’re working on adding many more of your favorites.

Finally, in addition to helping you find content from the apps you already have on your iPhone or iPad, we’ve also made it easier to discover great new apps right in Google Search (the same way you can already do on Android). Now when you search for things like “word games” you’ll see a list of relevant apps in your search results that you can easily install from there.

Stay tuned as we’ll be expanding the ways we can help you find great content from more apps in the coming months.

Posted by Eli Wald, Product Manager

Your mobile phone does wonderful things for you, but it’s still not always easy to find a quick piece of information or get something done on the fly while you’re in the middle of something else—like listening to music, texting your friends, or reading your email. Too often, you have to leave what you’re doing just to look for what you need somewhere else on your phone. Making it easy to find what you need is core to our mission, and today at Google I/O we previewed Google Now enhancements to help remove some of this hassle.

Since we launched Google Now, we’ve been expanding the ways it can help and do more of the work for you. You can get notifications like where you parked your car, news stories based on your interests, or help with travel like your upcoming reservations. We’ve also gotten better at giving smarter answers to some of your questions (“Is my flight on time?”) and at helping you get things done across your apps (“Ok Google, play Sugar on Spotify”).

We’re working to make Google Now a little smarter in the upcoming Android M release, so you can ask it to assist you with whatever you’re doing—right in the moment, anywhere on your phone. With “Now on tap,” you can simply tap and hold the home button for assistance without having to leave what you’re doing—whether you’re in an app or on a website. For example, if a friend emails you about seeing the new movie Tomorrowland, you can invoke Google Now without leaving your app, to quickly see the ratings, watch a trailer, or even buy tickets—then get right back to what you were doing.

If you’re chatting with a friend about where to get dinner, Google can bring you quick info about the place your friend recommends. You’ll also see other apps on your phone, like OpenTable or Yelp, so you can easily make a reservation, read reviews or check out the menu.

When you tap and hold the home button, Google gives you options that are a best guess of what might be helpful to you in the moment. But if you need something specific, you can also get Google to help by saying “Ok Google” from any screen, and any app. For example, if you’re listening to Twenty One Pilots on Spotify, you can say “Ok Google, who’s the lead singer” and get your answer right away.

As you’ve seen across these examples, Google can show you apps from your phone that may help with what you’re doing based on your context—IMDb for movie reviews, OpenTable for reservations, and many more. This is another way developers can get their apps in front of their users at the right moment, when an app is relevant to the task at hand. And best of all, developers don’t need to do anything to integrate with Now on tap as long as they have their apps indexed by Google.

We hope Now on tap can make your phone a little bit smarter and help you get things done quicker and in far fewer steps. We’ll be sharing more details about all this as we get closer to the release of Android M.

Posted by Aparna Chennapragada, Director of Product Management

Starting today, we’re bringing Tweets to Google Search on mobile devices. So now when you’re searching on the Google app or any browser on your phone or tablet, you can find real-time content from Twitter right in the search results.

Whether you’re interested in the latest from Taylor Swift, news about the #MadMenFinale, or updates on the NBA playoffs, you’ll have access to it directly from Google. Let’s use NASA as an example—just ask the Google app about “NASA Twitter,” and in the search results, you’ll see Tweets from @NASA:

Or if you heard today was Malcolm X’s birthday, you can ask the Google app and see what various people and organizations in the Twitter community are saying about it.

It’s a great way to get real-time info when something is happening. And it’s another way for organizations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments.

To start, we’re launching this on Google.com in English in the Google app (on Android and iOS) and on mobile browsers, rolling out gradually. We’re working on bringing it to more languages and to desktop, so stay tuned.

Posted by Ardan Arac, Senior Product Manager

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

Our phones help us find answers to questions large and small, stay on top of what’s happening in our day and in the world, and get things done quickly. The Google app can help you do all that, faster, and in one place. And Now cards in the app proactively bring you information at the right time without you even having to ask.

Earlier this year, we started showing Now cards from some of your favorite apps on Android devices. Now, we're working with 70 new partners to bring you even more Now cards from the apps you have on your phone.

For example, if you book a Zipcar out for a day hike, you can keep track of your return time and get directions to the drop-off location with Now cards – checking them is as easy as a simple tap on the Google app.

Or need a good a playlist on a Friday night? Now cards can recommend playlists and stations from Spotify, TuneIn or YouTube based on your preferences.

Here are a few other ways Now cards from your apps can help you out:

• Get breaking news about the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake from ABC News, Circa, or feedly
• Know when your pad thai is about to arrive with reminders from Eat24 that the food you ordered will soon be on your doorstep, or get inspired with the recipe of the day from Allrecipes
• Keep your fitness goals front and center with gentle nudges from Runkeeper, Jawbone, or Adidas
• And if you’re out to dinner, simply tap on a Now card to pay your bill with OpenTable

Make sure to update to the latest version of the Google app and your other favorite apps that work with this feature – then look out for helpful Now cards from those apps on Android over the next few weeks. Stay tuned as we add more apps and functionality in the future!

Posted by Aparna Chennapragada, Director of Product Management

We’ve all been there: you’re on your phone and click through to a website, only to find it’s hard to read or burdensome to navigate because it isn’t formatted for a mobile screen. With mobile phones increasingly becoming the primary way for people to search the Internet, we want to ensure that when you search on Google you find content that is not just relevant and timely, but also easy to read and interact with on smaller mobile screens.

A lack of mobile friendliness is also a problem for web publishers: visitors abandon websites that aren’t mobile friendly at higher rates. And research shows 74% of users say they are more likely to return to a mobile-friendly site.

That’s why we’ve been encouraging webmasters to create sites that avoid the pitfalls of small text and hard to navigate formatting in order to provide a great experience for mobile visitors to their pages. Back in November, we introduced a “mobile-friendly badge” to notify users when a link in search results led to a mobile friendly-page, and provided resources to help webmasters become mobile-friendly. And today we’re starting to roll out a change that we announced two months ago to take into account whether a site is mobile-friendly when we rank search results on mobile phones.

Note that this is just one of over 200 signals we use to evaluate the best results. Non-mobile-friendly sites won’t disappear from mobile Search results—they may still rank high if they hold great content the user wants.

If you use Google search on your mobile phone, you can now more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling. In just the two months since we announced this change, we’ve seen a 4.7 percentage point uptick in the proportion of sites that are mobile friendly, and we hope to see even more in the coming months.

Our mobile ranking will now use mobile-friendliness as a signal that weighs in favor of pages that are formatted for mobile phones, like the image on the right.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming: it could be as simple as adjusting website settings or picking out a design you like. Even if you opt to fully redesign your site, a small business website with 10-20 pages could be completed in a day or so.

Webmasters can check if their site is mobile-friendly by examining individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or checking the status of the entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. Once a site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process those pages (and webmasters can expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index).

Posted by Cody Kwok, Principal Software Engineer

If you’re done filling out your bracket for the NCAA Tournament, the Google app is here to help you keep up with every second of the action. Whether you’re searching for an updated bracket, the score of the Kentucky game, or live streams of each game (powered by Turner Sports), you can find it all in the Google app on your Android or iOS device.

Check in with the Google app for the latest tournament coverage
Just say “Ok Google, show me the latest on March Madness” to get real-time coverage of every game throughout the tournament. You’ll see a bracket with in-game and recap videos, and with one tap you can get a detailed box score and livestream link for each game. And for those times you can’t sneak away from work to watch a game live, cards in the Google app will show you in-progress scores throughout the games.

Find content directly from your favorite apps
If you want up-to-date news on your favorite teams or to catch up on highlight videos in the apps you love—like NCAA March Madness Live or Bleacher Report—the Google app can help you find it all quickly and easily. On Android devices, clicking on search results from mobile apps you’ve downloaded will now take you straight to that content. (It takes about a day for newly downloaded apps to appear in your search results.)

As you join the frenzy this March, the Google app is the ultimate sports buff to help you in your office pool or to keep up with your alma mater. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to see which teams and players are trending in Search, posted in real-time throughout the tournament.

Posted by Yoav Schwartzberg, Product Manager, Google Search