Does the Google app on Android handle too much?

Abner Li | Mar 12 2024 - 1:00 pm PT

The Google app on Android handles a lot of common information requests throughout your day, and I’m not just talking about Assistant, Lens, or Gemini.

9to5Google has a rebooted newsletter that highlights the biggest Google stories with added commentary and other tidbits. Sign up to get it early in your inbox, or continue reading 9to5Google Log Out below:

Something as basic as the weather is handled by the Google app. Fortunately, the company last year decided to release a major update that greatly modernized the experience. The UI is finally modern, while the forecast data underpinning is rather advanced.

However, it doesn’t deliver a perfect end-to-end experience that a dedicated app would, and you can blame the fundamental nature of the Google Search app for that. When you receive the evening notification previewing the next day’s weather, tapping opens a Google Search results page for “weather tomorrow” and not the fullscreen weather experience. That requires an extra tap and the mismatch between what I expect to open (the dedicated app-like experience) versus what actually does (Search) still bothers me years later.

So many common experiences are handled by dedicated cards that appear at the top of Google Search results. Over the years, Google has worked to provide more dedicated experiences, similar to weather, on Android.

Stock price is a good example of that, with Google last year introducing — and just updating — a Finance Watchlist widget that’s pretty good. Google is also working on a Sports widget that shows scores, while it already offers a floating score pill. However, everything, including live score notifications and recaps, leads back to Google Search.

As a comparison, iOS offers a native Stocks app, while Apple Sports was just introduced. At a basic level, they are more fluid and laser-focused than the Android solution. An app icon beats searching or a notification almost every time.

Meanwhile, if you look at the notifications the Google app sends, they include:

Due date reminders
Time to leave
Celebration reminders
Travel
Flight updates
Bill reminders
Package delivery status
Event updates
Public Alerts
News & stories
Weather: Current conditions and forecasts
Sports

Until recently, Assistant Reminders was also on that list, but that has mercifully been moved to Google Tasks. The Google app is also responsible for Sound Search song identification (Hum to Search, which is great), though YouTube search now has that functionality. Similarly, Google Podcasts is on the way out with YouTube Music replacing it as Android’s default podcasting player.

The Google app is the catchall for all knowledge experiences because Search is the company’s flagship product. That is fine on desktop, but I have long believed that things could be a bit more optimized on mobile. It would be nice if there were more native Android first-party experiences, while I’d also really like if the Google app/Search looked and felt like other first-party apps.