How would you like to do a search without touching a computer or phone ? Or have your next question answered before you even ask it ? Or get a reminder to pick up a carton of milk when you drive by a grocery store ? These are some of the new upgrades to Google 's search tools that the company announced Wednesday at Google I/O , its annual developers ' conference . About two-thirds of Web searches in the United States are done through Google , with Bing and Yahoo trailing far behind . We spoke to Google Senior Vice President Amit Singhal last week about the new search changes and his excitement for a certain fictional starship computer . Google Chrome gets voice commands . Google is adding voice-activated search to its Chrome browser , allowing people in audible distance of a computer 's microphone to start a search by saying , `` OK Google , '' out loud followed by their terms . Google 's search team is obsessed with the `` Star Trek '' computer , the fictional , omnipresent and invisible voice-activated system that answered questions and obeyed orders when Enterprise crew members began a sentence with the word `` computer . '' Singhal called it the `` ideal system . '' Swap out `` Computer '' for `` OK '' and you get a clear picture of where the company is steering its search engine . To activate Google Glass , wearers say , `` OK Glass , '' followed by a request such as `` record a video '' or `` Google the life span of lemurs . '' Now that voice-activated , natural-language interface is spreading across all devices . `` I ca n't wait to put my kitchen computer in this mode and settle all of our questions over dinner without having to pull our screens out , '' Singhal said . The new feature will roll out to Chrome users across platforms over the next few weeks . Search results add more context . Google processes more than 1 billion searches every day , 85 % of which have been Googled before . All that experience means the search engine knows more than just the answer ; it knows what searches commonly happen next . Now the search engine is integrating that predictive content into the answer , potentially saving people a step . `` We would pretty much anticipate the next question you are going to ask , '' Singhal said . Looking up the population of Canada ? According to past searches , the most common follow-up search is for the population of California ( if you 're wondering , California has slightly more people than Canada ) . A population search could also show charts comparing similar locations and related statistics such as life expectancy and gross domestic product . The new feature also taps into Google 's Knowledge Graph to make the necessary connections . The Knowledge Graph is Google 's growing database of things -- you may have noticed its items showing up on the right-hand side of a common list of search results . Where searches used to be largely based on the presence of keywords , the graph makes more concrete connections and detects relationships . For example , it knows `` Warren Harding '' is n't just two words . Google has associated the name with the 29th president and added it to a collection of U.S. presidents . Google Now adds reminders . Google Now is Google 's predictive search tool found in the Android and iOS Google search apps . The tool pulls information from your calendar , Gmail account , search history and phone 's location to serve up relevant information before you can search for it . These bites of data , called cards , might show the traffic for the morning commute to work , Zagat reviews for a restaurant where you have reservations , and sports scores for the teams you look up the most . This week Google is adding reminders to the mix . Using your phone 's location , the reminders will pop up when you need them . A reminder to pick up frozen peas could appear when you are near the local grocery store , while a reminder to put gym clothes in the car could show up on your phone before you leave the house in the morning . These types of reminders are common in mobile apps . Apple , for example , has its own location-based reminders tool on the iPhone and iPad . The new reminders feature will be available for Android first before eventually coming to iOS . Google also is rolling out a few more Google Now cards , including ones that provide updates on music and movies . Taken alone , these new features might seem minor . But together they add up to a new era of intuitive and predictive Google search across devices , platforms and locations .
Google announces new features for its search engine at its Google I/O conference . Chrome will be able to begin voice-activated searches when people say , `` OK Google '' Search results will add contextual information based on common follow-up searches . Predictive search tool Google Now is adding reminders .