Making Google Calendar more like Google Now

I wish Gmail and Google Calendar were built for consumers instead of businesses. That shift could make the suite of apps infinitely more useful. They are already vital in day-to-day use, but the target audience feels more like employees of a company than anybody else. 

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What if Google Now-era cards appeared in Google Calendar? Instead of just events and tasks, imagine if Calendar’s Schedule view showed:

• Sports scores for teams you follow. Show this live updating card alongside other Calendar entries, and then keep the final result when it’s over so that you can always scroll back for results the morning after.
• Traffic/time to destination before upcoming events that have addresses 
• Flight cards with real-time status information 
• New episodes of shows and new movies in theaters
• New music and even podcast releases, as well as concerts and other nearby events 
• Reminders about upcoming packages 
• Weather everywhere, including current conditions, the next day’s forecasts, what to expect at every event, etc.
• Daily fitness stats that could remind you to keep going mid-day or to schedule something else the next day

Make Google Calendar a destination that people want to open more often throughout the day. I’d argue that a feed — see: Google Now — is better than temporary alerts from the Google app/Assistant that clutter your notifications feed and is competition with everything else.

Meanwhile, putting it in an existing app that people already use is more natural than Assistant Snapshot ever was. You can now make these cards optional so that people who just want their calendar events aren’t overwhelmed. 

The cards in Google Calendar should be glanceable and rich enough by themselves, with a link to Google Search for more information and direct shortcuts to YouTube Music, Google Maps, etc. 

Given Gmail and Search, Google is in a very unique position to know this information without having to ask. It would be a shame to not surface it proactively and intelligently in the apps people use. 

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