(Bloomberg Business) -- What Google just announced at its IO conference is a bombshell for the future of the company. For years the search giant has witnessed the chipping away of its core product — search — due to the rise of mobile applications and their siloed-off experiences. Users are engaging more and more with programs that have no attachment or often need for search on the broad web, and as a result Google's position as the owner of our habits, interests, and needs on the internet has looked increasingly at risk.

Today, Google might have just changed its trajectory.

The company demoed a new feature of its Android OS which allows its Now service (a dashboard of notifications focused on your life and interests) to plug in as a layer that essentially hovers above any app running on your phone or tablet. It's always on and listening. This means that you can get contextual search information around almost anything you're doing, provided there is text and data that Google can pull from the app itself. And the best part is that developers won't have to make any changes to their existing software to allow the new service — dubbed Now on Tap — to bring search and context into the user's view.