Why Google Is About to Get Even Better at Knowing Your Schedule The search giant's acquisition of Timeful is a play to make products such as Gmail, Calendar and Inbox more efficient at organizing and scheduling events.
By Laura Entis
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Google already pulls out events from your emails and automatically adds them to your calendar. Soon, it may be able to do way more than that.
Yesterday Google announced that it has acquired Timeful, a scheduling iOS app that syncs with your calendar and uses machine learning, data analysis and behavioral science to customize your digital calendar in order to optimize time management and quash procrastination, for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition allows Google to incorporate Timeful's technology into products such as Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs to make them more efficient at organizing and scheduling events.
"We still have to do a lot of logistical work ourselves—like deciding to what time exactly we should snooze that Reminder in order to get it done in time for Mom's birthday, or figuring out when to work on that presentation so that it's ready for next week's sales pitch," Google said in a blog post. "Timeful is joining the Google family to help make getting things done in your life even easier."
Related: This New App Wants to Optimize Your Schedule by Running It Through an Algorithm
Launched last June, Timeful was founded by Yoav Shoham, a serial entrepreneur and artificial-intelligence expert, Dan Ariely, a notable behavioral economist, and Jacob Bank, the company's CEO and a computer science PhD candidate at Stanford. The company raised $7 million from venture-capital firms including Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Data Collective and Ashton Kutcher's A-Grade Investments.
The app takes the sophisticated algorithm-style learning that is already used to predict what song you'd like to listen next (Pandora), what item you'd like to see in your shopping cart (Amazon) or how much money you typically spend on movies and entertainment in a given month (Mint), and applies it to time management.
"In this century we are all busy executives, but we don't all have executive assistants, Shoham told Entrepreneur last July. "In many areas of life, big data has become essential. I think we're now at the point where we can apply it to time. It's too important a topic to leave unaided by technology.
While the app will still be available on iOS (there was never an Android edition), Timeful's 19-person team will now focus on how its technology can be applied to Google products.
Related: The 15 Best Productivity Apps for Getting Things Done
