For instance, while listening to music in Spotify you can search for more info on an artist, or if you're talking about a restaurant in WhatsApp, Google can pull up data on the place and even help you make reservations. And this is not a feature of the app itself, rather a helper that lives inside of the entire operating system.

This is a major move for two reasons. The first is that it really brings Google back to a place of dominance as the glue that holds your digital life together. The web has thrived and grown in no small part because of Google's ability to track, organize, and understand all of its disparate pieces. Now it's able to do the same thing with every app running on your phone. It allows Google to get back into the search game by speaking the common language of apps. It gives the company a second life with access to user behavior and needs.

But secondly, it starts to show how Google can be an interconnecting layer between the apps themselves — a kind of neutral staging ground between one action and another. This is a sea-change for how we use our mobile devices and how mobile apps interact with one another. Currently, we use OS-defined tools which let apps interact with each other (with rules defined by the OS-makers, not developers). But imagine if developers didn't have to think about how their work connects to the rest of your world? Imagine if Now on Tap is aware enough of the core functions of those apps that it can predict what you'd most likely want to do with them, and then execute on those needs?

Eoin Treacy's view

We have become somewhat inured by Google’s announcements of what can realistically be described as vanity projects; plans for a massive new headquarters which had to be shelved being the most recent. However today’s release is important because it takes Google back into where it makes the vast majority of its money. I downloaded the Google search app onto my phone last week. The linking together of various different elements of search results is a positive development in my opinion. I’ve been using it more as a result and this type of user engagement should be beneficial for the company’s bottom line.

The share has not responded to the news, not least because investors will want to see evidence of revenue growth and margin expansion before giving it the benefit of the doubt following what has so far been an 18-month congestion area. The $525 area will need to hold if potential for additional higher to lateral ranging is to be given the benefit of the doubt.