Update to Google Now lets you refer to people by relationship

One of the things I have found frustrating about Google Now was in the inability to refer to one of your contacts by relationship. Apple has this feature on iOS, but Google for some reason decided to keep it away from their personal assistant until now.

Following a recent update to the service, you can simply say "text my wife" or "call mom" and it will know who you mean. Of course, you may need to set it up and tell the system who those people are the first time.

When you first use this feature it will ask you can assign a contact to a relationship and it will be saved to that contact. However it is important to remember that Google Now will only remember the association you have assigned. For example, if you have someone set as your "mom", you can refer to that person also as "mother", but it won't work if you say "mommy" (or "mummy" depending on your accent). If you say "call mommy" it will claim to not know who that is and ask you to set that relationship every time, but the person you pick will be accessible by saying "call mom".

Strangely this does not link to the relationship feature already available in your contact list. It creates a new association within Google Now which cannot be edited at this time.

Unfortunately shortened terms also don't seam to work. If you use terms like  "call my bro" or "call my sis", Google Now will either think bro means dad and sis means mom, or it will ask you who you meant, but not assign that person to the term.

Anyone with Google Now should be able to use this feature right now, because this looks like a server-side update, not an update to your Search app. Just run Google Now, give it a try and let us know what you think.

source: +Google