Swipe right on Android to see why Google is heading the wrong way

Google is no longer the darling that it once was. While it’s still clearly a huge, powerful and (generally) helpful company, it’s trending the wrong way.

Business Insider compares Google to lumbering giants like IBM, and last year I shared how Google’s treatment of RSS ended up being horrible for the health of the internet at large.

With Google becoming more sensitive to revenue and keeping shareholders happy, it’s making all of their services worse. We all all know how cluttered search results are becoming with ads, but there’s a relatively small thing on Android phones that showcases it even better — the slow death of “Google Now”.

Google Now?

For those not familiar with Google Now, it was a feature on Android phones (and iPhones for a while too) that was absolutely brilliant. You could swipe right on your home screen and Google would tell you tons of relevant information — info about your upcoming flights, weather, packages being shipped to you, concerts coming to your area that you might like, sports scores, and tons of other useful info. It was smart, personal, and very helpful.

Here’s an example of some of those cards from an article on Search Engine Journal back in 2012: