Google updates its iOS, Android, and web app with tappable icons for sports, entertainment, weather, and more
Context & Ripple Effects
This update lands a week after Google gave its Search app on iOS Gboard, a search widget, and expanded 3D Touch, continuing a steady drumbeat of app refinements through early 2017. The tappable icons are the navigation layer for a surface Google has been assembling since late 2015, when it added Google Now cards for 70 third-party apps and then rebuilt weather with detailed 10-day forecasts.
The real anchor is December's distinct feeds for appointments and personalized news like sports and entertainment, which put curated content inside the search app for the first time. Tappable icons turn that feed from something you scroll past into something you can browse by topic — the difference between a stream and a destination.
First-order effects
- Users on iOS, Android, and web can now jump straight into sports, entertainment, and weather results with one tap, shortening the path from opening the app to consuming content.
Second-order effects
- Deeper topic browsing raises time spent inside the Google app, pressuring the same attention Google's feed competes for against social and news apps — and giving publishers of sports and entertainment coverage another Google-controlled entry point.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Now cards in 2015, feeds in 2016, tappable topics in 2017 — the search app keeps evolving from a query box into a browsable, personalized portal, with Google curating more of what users see before they ever type.
The trend: Google is steadily converting its search app from a reactive query tool into a proactive, topic-browsable content surface it controls end to end.