For years Android fans have lamented the fact that they couldn’t just push a button and replace their smartphone’s interface with stock Android. The release of KitKat (Android 4.4) won’t change that, but it looks like Google has finally delivered the next best thing. As of yesterday, the company is completely re-imagining the Android search experience, a change that could have a much larger effect on the homescreen than you might have guessed.
Of the many changes to Android 4.4 under the hood, this may end up being the most significant. In the past, Google’s Launcher app has been something you could only get if you either owned a Nexus phone. In other words, if you bought a Samsung GS4 with TouchWiz or an HTC One with Sense, for the most part that’s the UI you were stuck with. Soon that’s likely to change, and instead it looks like you’ll be able to switch to the Google way of doing things on just about any Android phone.
Ron Amadeo at Ars recently discovered that the homescreen for Android 4.4 was a little different than it was before. Most of the code that you interact with when using the homescreen on theNexus 5 isn’t actually happening in the homescreen app. Instead, the action is taking place inside the Google Search app.
A big part of Google Now is content delivery — for example, telling you when TV shows are on or when movies hit the theater. If you’re close to a restaurant in its database (and you haven’t disabled the card), Google Now will let you know. This creates a delivery mechanism for content that Google has had available on every Android phone, but is now moving from offering a service to gently nudging it in your general direction.
Android will effectively become a vacuum for Google search with Android 4.4. With the new app indexing features being made available in KitKat, Google will be able to pull information from apps and use it to display more relevant results to users. Searching for a recipe could drop you off inside your favorite cooking app, for example. The whole phone becomes part of the search results, with Google at the helm deciding which results are the most relevant. In the end this is great for the users interested in this experience, and it paints a clear road for Google taking control of their OS once and for all.
Source : Geek.com
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