By 
It’s another crazy “Google Wednesday” in the Play Store. This is the day Google typically pushes out updates to a handful of their apps on Google Play, and we wait patiently with our forks and knives. So, what’s on the menu for today? Well, for the most part, relatively minor updates, a few we’ve already covered in earlier posts from today. Bug fixes are always a given, but here are a few other tidbits you can expect to find in these new Google app updates…
- Chrome Beta: Probably the most boring out of the bunch, seems to be little here than a regular ‘ol stability update. More can be found here.
- Chromecast: The 3-dot settings has been moved from the overflow bar, to the sidebar menu falling in line with the rest of Google’s recently updated apps.
- Google Maps: Maps now shows event results when searching for businesses, along with a new navigation feature that dims the display in between turns to conserve battery. Nice.
- Google Search: Image search has been tweaked, along with options to toggle hotword detection only while on the homescreen, while still keeping it enabled in Google Search (or vice versa).
- Google Translate: Adds handwriting for Arabic, Bosnian, Cebuano, Gujarati, Hmong, Kannada, Maltese, Mongolian, Persian, Punjabi, Somali, Tamil, and Telugu.
- Google Wallet: Google added a new “Orders” section in the sidebar menu for tracking packages. You can read more about it in our previous post here.
- YouTube: The dogfood version accidentally slipped out, but it’s now been replaced by the official 5.5.27. You can read about all the changes in our previous post here.
And that just about concludes all the Google updates for Wednesday (at the time of writing). If you guys find anything new, feel free to shout ’em out below. Until next Wednesday!
Thanks, Sam and everyone else for the tips!
YouTube Alpo was interesting…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n51MeyaFG4A
Now they just need to hope over to either the Chromecast itself and.or the extension for Chrome. Something happened and mine crashes constantly now.
since they removed search nearby, the maps application is crap. It used
to be my companion in my business and leisure travel trips. Driving in
the interstate, it was easy to find restaurants, distances, and
directions just by reading the list. I uninstalled the app for three
weeks and I didn’t even remember the app wasn’t there.
https://productforums.google.c…[1-25-false]
Long list why the search nearby function is needed back
It’s not removed, it’s just streamlined into one search field. Hit the search box – you can type something like “Gas station” and get the usual results search nearby would give you. There’s also a row of icons that can be expanded into a long list of categories that covers everything that used to be in the standalone Places app.
Let’s say, I’m driving in a lonely interstate. Search for restaurants. The map needs to be zoomed out far enough to pick the restaurants, second the list doesn’t tell you how far they are and in which direction. It sucks. Check the google forums 22 pages of complaints. It is not streamlined. Even mapquest does a better job now