Google's Parking Location Card Is Neat, But Not Perfect Just Yet

Google Apps is trying to do battle with an old enemy in Apple’s (News - Alert) Siri. The search giant seems to understand that the talking virtual assistant has already managed to win the “intelligent verbal helper” market and Google (News - Alert) is looking to best its competition by adding more when it comes to the mobile user experience.  One little tweak to Google’s virtual assistant, Google Now is the ability to quickly and easily mark down where you have parked so you can find your car that much easier when you’re ready to head home.

The newest addition to the Google Search App was launched last Wednesday had a couple of different tweaks and new features that are all geared towards drawing more people into using the Android (News - Alert) based applications. The Parking Location Card will not only tell you where you’ve parked your car, but is actually supposed to be able to tell you when you’ve parked.

By doing this automatically, it would seem it would take the step of having to actually log your parking spot (or forgetting to) when you arrive at a particular destination. When you are ready to head home, or to another hot spot, you simply go into Google Search and find the Parking Location Card. Tap this app and it will navigate you on foot back to your car.

There do appear to be a couple of drawbacks to this new application. The first is that the updating of your location isn’t instantaneous and can take up to 15 minutes to log where you’ve parked. While most people are going to be away from their car for more than that time it may not be a big deal, but is something Google should work on in the near future. The more annoying drawback for users right now, is that the Parking Location Card doesn’t guide people right back to their driver side door. The application can likely get you to within eyesight of your car but the location assist isn’t perfect just yet.