Google’s informative Now on Tap ad arrives 8 months too late

Google just released a new ad for Now on Tap, and it’s actually pretty good! Too bad it’s only coming out eight months after the feature first hit the shelves with the Nexus 6P and 5X, and nearly a year after it was first announced at last year’s Google I/O.

If you’re not familiar – we don’t blame you – Now on Tap scans your screen for any key words to help you find more information without having to copy and paste between apps.

For example, maybe your friend suggested a movie to watch in an email; you can hold the home button to get information such as reviews and showtimes without opening up Chrome or Search. It’s available on any phone running Android Mashmallow and it works surprisingly well.

The ad is clear and concise about showing people how they could use this feature – looking up restaurants referred to in a text message or finding concerts for an artist – which is available to any phone running Android Marshmallow.

It’s a shame it took Google so long to let the masses know about what is arguably Marshmallow’s most useful new feature. Of course, Android fragmentation being as it is, non-Nexus devices have only recently started to implement the feature, so the timing does make some sense.

Still, I can’t help but feel that if Google marketed Android’s best features more actively, third-party manufacturers would step their software-update game up.

Via Android Police