Google has a habit of shipping experimental tools that never quite reach mainstream users. So when the same team that built its short-lived AI dictation app earlier this year now releases a full meeting note-taker, the obvious question is: is this a real product, or just another showcase for Gemma?
The app is called Google AI Edge Foresight, and it runs entirely offline on Apple Silicon Macs using the on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model, which has 740 million parameters. It captures meeting notes across apps, including in-person meetings, with no internet connection required. For anyone who has ever tried to use an AI note-taker on a plane or in a building with a spotty connection, that’s a genuinely useful distinction.
The layout will feel familiar to anyone who has used Granola, the popular AI note-taker that has built a loyal following among founders and operators. Foresight uses the same split-screen approach: your shorthand notes on one side, AI-generated notes on the other. You can write manually while the app transcribes, view the full transcript, or query a Gemma 4-powered assistant for answers mid-meeting. It also lets users upload PDFs, Google Docs, Office files, plain text, Markdown, and web bookmarks to build a knowledge base, so the assistant can surface relevant context in real time when a related point comes up.
That knowledge base feature is where Foresight starts to feel less like a Granola clone and more like something with its own angle. Competitors like Otter.ai, Fireflies, and Fathom are cloud-first by design. Foresight is betting that some users, particularly those in regulated industries or security-conscious teams, will pay a real premium for a tool where nothing leaves the device.
The meeting note-taker market is crowded and getting more crowded fast. Wispr expanded from dictation into note-taking. Calendly shipped its own notes feature. And Superhuman, formerly Grammarly, acquired YC-backed Fathom just last month, signaling that consolidation is starting. Google entering this space, even experimentally, adds pressure across the board.
But Google’s track record with experimental tools is mixed at best. The earlier dictation app never found mainstream traction. Foresight could follow the same path, used mainly by developers testing what Gemma can do locally rather than by the knowledge workers it seems designed for. The more likely scenario is that Google uses this to validate on-device performance, then ships a cloud-connected consumer version through Gemini that works across Zoom, Meet, and similar platforms. That product would be far harder for Granola and its peers to compete with.
