Figuring out how broke you\u2019re about to become has never been easier: a new feature being rolled out by Google is letting mobile app users see when their bills are due and how much is owed with a single prompt.<\/p>\n
The search engine announced in a statement<\/a> on Tuesday this week that a new feature in the Google app available for Android- and iOS-powered devices will let users quickly see if they have any bills coming up by simply saying a few words into the phone or tablet\u2019s microphone.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you can’t remember whether you’ve paid your bills \u2013 or you simply can’t remember how much money you need to pay \u2013 you can now just ask Google,\u201d<\/em> the company said. \u201cTap the mic on the Google app and say, \u2018Show me my bills\u2019 or \u2018My bills due this week.\u2019 If you have the payment due date and amount in your Gmail, you\u2019ll see a quick summary of upcoming and past bills. Pretty handy, huh?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Google has already taken a tremendous amount of heat in recent years after implementing an automated system that scans the contents of emails sent into its Gmail service in order to deliver customers more individualized services and advertisements. Although privacy advocates are likely to oppose the company\u2019s newest feature, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> was quick to report that users who\u2019ve downloaded the eponymous Google mobile app (formerly known as \u201cGoogle Search\u201d) must opt-in to the latest service.<\/p>\n \u201cThese features are available to users of Google\u2019s search app who have turned on the Google Now feature and given Google permission to access information from their Gmail accounts,\u201d<\/em> Alistair Barr reported on Tuesday this week for the paper.<\/p>\n Once the user does opt in, Barr added, Google lets them known on an individualizes basis if certain content coming into their online accounts, like a Gmail message about a bill that\u2019ll soon be due, is being fed into the mobile app.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the service shows a bill with the amount due (or an airline reservation or anything else scraped from the user\u2019s own Gmail account) at the top of a list of search results, it says \u2018Only you can see this result\u2019 to let users know that the rest of the world cannot see how much they owe Comcast this month,\u201d<\/em>the paper reported.<\/p>\n And for those who don\u2019t receive such emails, Venture Beat<\/a> acknowledged, then Google\u2019s newest feature may influence some customers to adjust their options.<\/p>\n \u201cIn case you weren\u2019t getting your bills sent to your inbox, this is naturally an incentive to sign up for email notifications with your Gmail account, which is of course exactly what Google wants,\u201d<\/em> Emil Protalinski wrote for the website.<\/p>\n Amid lawsuits concerning its automated scanning of Gmail messages, Google updated its terms-of-service earlier this year in April to change from what one judge previously called \u201cvague at best, and misleading, at worst<\/em>\u201d user conditions.<\/p>\n This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Figuring out how broke you\u2019re about to become has never been easier: a new feature being rolled out by Google is letting mobile app users see when their bills are due and how much is owed with a single prompt. The search engine announced in a statement on Tuesday this week that a new feature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-140497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}