Google Can Now Warn You When a Restaurant Will Be Super-Crowded

All-seeing, all-knowing Google can now help you avoid restaurants at their most crowded times. Yesterday the company announced a pretty awesome new search feature that reveals the busiest times for restaurants, stores, and other businesses.

The graphed data — which will soon be viewable in the info cards for "millions of places and businesses around the world" listed in Google Search, right below the address and hours — is displayed hour-by-hour for each day of the week, and could probably serve as a good reminder that your favorite cocktail bar gets super-packed on Fridays during happy hour. It doesn't look like the feature has been fully rolled out just yet, but expect to see it widespread soon.

As The Verge explains, "The feature is built with the same anonymized Android location data Google uses to estimate how heavy traffic is on a given road — and like the traffic data, it's just an estimate. The system can't tell how many people are in line at a given store, just how many are in the store's walls at a given time." So even if Google can't tell you precisely how long the wait for a latte is at your favorite coffee shop, at least you'll have an idea as to whether or not there will be room for you and your laptop.