Plus, search can be enabled both by clicking the microphone button and by saying “OK Google”, which means it could inadvertently record you, depending on what you’re talking about. So, nothing goes unrecorded in your interaction with it.
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If you frequently use the virtual assistant on your Android phone, chances are Google is recording and storing your queries. It’s possible to listen to the recordings and delete them as you see please.
Even your searches, frequency of search and other online habits find a record there.
If you like to test slightly unpolished features before they hit the mainstream, then Google Maps has a new treat for you.
To use this system, you’ll open your camera app – the standard Google Camera app, for now, but we would not be surprised to see it working through all camera apps soon. With the new update, this would be much more precise as one would be able to select text and then ping Google for the information.
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The release of the app ties in with Google’s increasing use of public betas, which are trial versions of software that are made available to ordinary Joes to test ahead of release. Fortunately, Google now makes finding, and wiping, your phone as simple as visiting a webpage. By opening Now on Tap on an image, search will pull up cards showing what you’re looking at. Once you’ve signed up, Google says that “you’ll get an update with the testing version shortly” thereafter. Google says the new update to Now on Tap is “available everywhere” though notes that word definitions will be currently available in English only. Homeland, the TV series, could perhaps have used such a feature; local artists spray-painted graffiti in a protest against the show’s racist portrayal of the Middle East. Okonkwo explains that this feature works for more than just famous structures. That tool, along with a similar feature called Device Manager for Android devices, have been pretty successful at deterring smartphone theft.
