The amount of information we come across on a daily basis practically guarantees that critical information will go through the cracks. While many people rely on their brainpower to recall things, research has shown that the majority of people forget things far too fast. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of technology solutions that attempt to remind users of critical but neglected activities, and Google is adding one such solution to its Android app, Messages, after years of development in Gmail.
When Google took the contentious decision to shut down the popular email app Inbox, it attempted to integrate the app’s sophisticated capabilities into Gmail. Google implemented a “nudge” tool to Gmail three years ago, based on the Boomerang-like Inbox Pause concept, to remind users about crucial emails that may have gone ignored. Because not everyone communicates via email these days, Google is now introducing it to Messages.
New options linked to “Nudges” have been uncovered in the Google Messages Android app’s 9.5 beta version, according to certain publications. In this new addition, you’ll find two separate but related settings: one for messages you might need to reply to, and another for communications you might wish to follow up on. The suggested messages will appear at the top of your messages list in both circumstances.
These suggestions, of course, aren’t created on the spur of the moment, and they rely on Google’s favourite machine learning sauce to identify which messages are significant and which aren’t. This, in turn, will almost certainly necessitate allowing Google to examine such messages, which may cause some concern. You do, however, have the option to disable the feature.
There’s no way of knowing when this nudge function will make its way to Google Messages. It isn’t even ready for beta testers, so there’s still a risk that Google will pull the plug on it before it reaches the general public.
