Google buys Timeful, promising intelligent event scheduling for Inbox and Calendar
A popular third-party app for iOS, Timeful, is now part of the Google product family. Google announced its purchase of Timeful on Monday, saying it will bring the app's scheduling smarts to Google Inbox, Calendar and more.
A quick read of Timeful's description on the iTunes App Store tells me why Google was interested in the technology; if you didn't know it came from an independent developer, you might think it was created by Google itself:
Timeful brings everything that competes for your time together into one place - your meetings, events, to-dos, and even good habits you're looking to develop. It uses sophisticated algorithms to suggest the best times to schedule to-dos and habits throughout the day - based on your available time, location and most productive hours of the day. Timeful learns from your behaviors, adapts to your schedule, and personalizes the recommendations the more you use it.
That sounds quite a bit like the contextual information Google already pieces together with Google Now and its other services to me.
Featured
See also: Google Now becomes a more robust platform with 70 new partner apps
Similar to Google Now, which starts to learn about you when you provide it access to your Gmail account, Timeful understands individual patterns in your day. It then helps schedule events or activities based around that pattern, with the intent being more efficiency and productivity. Timeful can also built a task or to-do list around your events.
Neither Google nor Timeful shared financial details of the deal.
However, Timeful noted that while its iOS app will still be available for download, the company will be focusing on new projects at Google, so I wouldn't expect any updates if you use the app on an iPhone or iPad.