Monday, December 23, 2024

Google Discover now has its own… ‘games’

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Google has been building out the “your space” section of Discover for a few months and is now using it to surface games…

We spotted a “Today’s Teaser” card this afternoon alongside the other widgets for weather, air quality, sports, and finance. The “Customize your space” menu refers to this as “Games with new content daily.”

The Discover game is a “would you rather” poll, with Google showing the results after you vote with a related search offered. This has been going on for a week:

Your participation in this poll is visible to other participants in aggregate.

  • July 18: 47% experience a day as a butterfly vs. 53% experience a day as a dolphin
  • July 19: 63% stay at a resort for a week vs. 37% backpack across Europe for three months
  • July 20: 52% see the world with a child’s wonder vs. 48% see the world with the wisdom of age
  • July 21: 47% make friends with a raccoon vs. 53% make friends with a crow
  • July 22: 64% live in a world with magic vs. 36% live in a world with scifi-esque technology
  • July 23: 53% embrace the uncertainty of life with joy vs. 47% seek out answers to life’s mysteries
  • July 24: 44% humanity brings back dinosaurs vs. 56% humanity is visited by aliens

You can participate and access this page directly at: dailygames.discover.google.com. This feels like Google trying to replicate the experience of a homepage with polls that people will return to daily.

Meanwhile, Google also recently added an “Updates from search” card with “Summaries from the freshest top stories on your interests.” 

It takes the shape of a square card that’s the size of two space widgets stacked one on top of another. There’s a Gemini-esque gradient background and sparkle in the bottom-right corner.  

I previously searched “los angeles lakers” and got back “Team USA defeats Germany in exhibition game.” Another is “united states men’s national soccer team” for “France beats US in opening Olympics soccer match” Tapping takes you to a standard Google Search results page.

The design is quite prominent and pushes down the Discover feed further. It’s an interesting use of the space.

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