What Google’s Acquisition of Timeful Could Mean for You

Timeful is a popular iOS app that makes you more productive by aggregating your entire life’s list of to-do’s into your favorite calendar and provides guidance about scheduling your priorities. Now, it’s destined to become more popular and more powerful because it’s been acquired by Google.

What Is Timeful?

If you’re one of those people who prefers to use the advancements of modern technology to meet goals, set deadlines and accomplish more in a given day, then you’ve probably already heard of Timeful. It employs a sophisticated algorithm that suggests to you the best times to get things done.

Timeful is a scheduling assistant, squared.

It was ranked among the “100 Best iPhone Apps of 2015” by PC Magazine and “The World’s Greatest Apps” by Business Insider for a very good reason. It evaluates the entirety of your to-do list – including everything from events, meetings, goals and workouts – and gives you advice about how to accomplish it all with maximum efficiency.

Timeful looks at your past habits and tells you the most productive hours of the day to get particular tasks done. For example, if you’re a morning person, then you can expect Timeful to let you know that you should prioritize important tasks for the morning.

As you keep using Timeful, it learns from your behaviors and adapts to your strengths. It will create personalized recommendations based on your history.

Specifically, you can use the app to schedule to-do’s by dragging them directly onto your calendar, setting aside time for personal development of great habits, highlighting the fact that you’re busy on shared calendars and staying in sync with all of your calendars from a variety of vendors.

The Acquisition

Timeful just launched in July of 2014. However, it doesn’t take long for high-tech companies like Google to notice which apps present themselves as excellent opportunities for acquisition.

The company received its initial round of funding from KPCB, Data Collective, Khosla Ventures and actor Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Ventures. While the financial specifics of the acquisition have not been published as of this writing, it’s fairly certain that all of those investors will get their money back plus a tidy profit.

The app already worked with existing calendar software, such as iCal, Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar. Google tends to love proprietary software, but it would be surprising if Timeful didn’t continue to support the calendar software produced by other vendors.

The acquisition makes perfect sense for Google, because the company has a strategic mission to advance the feature set of popular apps that it’s acquired, especially as they deal with time management and communication online.

Here’s what Alex Gawley, director of product management for Gmail – also a Google property – had to say about Google’s designs for Timeful: “The Timeful team has built an impressive system that helps you organize your life by understanding your schedule, habits and needs. You can tell Timeful you want to exercise three times a week or that you need to call the bank by next Tuesday, and their system will make sure you get it done based on an understanding of both your schedule and your priorities. We’re excited about all the ways Timeful’s technology can be applied across products like Inbox, Calendar and beyond, so we can do more of the work for you and let you focus on being creative, having fun and spending time with the people you care about.”

The merger promises to provide some exciting outcomes. Google will no doubt recommend feature enhancements that not only make the app more useful, but also promote the Google brand.

Download Timeful for iOS (Android version not yet in Beta).

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