Google Now Notifications Pop Up In Chrome Beta

Google has added Google Now notifications to its Chrome browser, bringing the contextual alerts for travel warnings, flight information, and package shipments to the desktop. The functionality, now an option in the latest Chrome beta, expands Google Now from Android and iOS to Windows, Mac, and Chromebook.

Using it is as straightforward as signing into Chrome with the same account that you use Google Now with on your mobile device. After that, Now will show a subset of the full notifications in the sidebar on the right, just as they'd usually pop up on a phone or tablet.

Not all of the Now cards will be supported, at least initially. At the start, cards for weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders will be shown; others, like the monthly summary of how much you've walked, won't be.

Meanwhile, location-based cards will be dependent on the location of your phone rather than your computer, so if you've loaned that to someone else alerts to remind you to leave the office in order to beat traffic, for instance, won't necessarily be accurate.

Google first added Now functionality to Chrome canary in mid-January, its bleeding-edge version for the very earliest of adopters (and those particularly willing to put up with bugs). The company has for a while been positioning the contextual awareness of services like Google Now as the future of search and mobile devices, including wearables like Glass.