7 Great Things About Google

What does the future hold now that Google Plus has gone? It may have come as a surprise when Google announced that they were shutting down Google+ but after a security breach earlier in the year and by its own admission, a low consumer usage and engagement, Google was left with little choice but to wind down Google+.

So what can we expect from Google as they move forward? Earlier on in the year Google held its annual I/O developers conference and announced some exciting changes and developments.
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• Google Assistant will have an update that makes having a conversation with the app much more natural. It will also have the capacity to understand multiple questions at once.
• There will be more AI features for Google Photos and powerful tools to edit and organise your photos as Google strives to become the home for all your photos.
• Google Assistant is coming to Google Maps. In order to better personalise the user experience with Google Maps, the new AI features will help provide better recommendations for local places.
• AI is also coming to Google News which will let users read about the news they actually have an interest in and understand the whole story.
• Gmail Smart Compose is a new addition which sees AI suggesting ways to finish sentences as they are being written.
• Google Duplex is the name given by Google for the new technology resulting from the research and development into “natural language, deep learning and text-to-speech”. The aim of this technology is to create computers that sound and behave like humans during interactions.
• Dashboard to help users find the right balance. In an attempt to help users moderate their use of technology Google have designed features that will help identify how much time they are spending on their device (and on which parts), a feature that will put the device to sleep and in silence mode when it is placed face down and a “Wind Down Mode” feature that will put the device on hold and dim the front of the device at a time set by the user.

Here are 7 free Google tools you should make sure you have on your device:

1. Google Calendar is a free, time-management web app. It allows you to create, edit and share events as well as  many other time saving functions
2. Google Docs this free app lets users create, edit and share all manner of documents, from invoices to resumes.
3. Google Analytics is a free app that allows you to analyse the data from your business and give you a better understanding of your customers.
4. Gmail Using Gmail as your email client for your domain specific email address is easy and free. Find out how here >
5. Google Drive is a cloud storage app, giving you 15GB of free storage space.
6. Blogger is a free publishing platform which lets users easily upload their content to their blog via email and other apps. It’s also integrated with other Google apps such as Analytics giving the user access to valuable information about their audience.
7. Google Voice is an internet based app which allows you use one phone number and forward it to multiple phones. This means as you move, change jobs etc your phone number stays the same for your contacts.

So, the future is looking great for Google and the end of Google+ seems to have been a mere blip for this innovative company. AI is a major development which sees Google moving from strength to strength.

For more information and downloads to the Google apps click here >