I gave up on printed guidebooks a few years ago. Those dog-eared books I once lugged around Prague's pubs and the steamy sidewalks of Bangkok now seem like dead weight. I can't help worry that the new ones are out-of-date as soon as they hit the Amazon warehouse. The same goes for the digital counterparts from the stalwart guidebook companies - how can I trust that they'll have info as current as what I can find with a little web searching?

Enter Google Trips. Launched in September, this crisply designed (free) app has been touted as a must-have for travelers. It provides basic, up-to-the-minute intel on popular tourist sites (museums, landmarks and the like) around the world and, in some 200 cities, offers themed itineraries, from Romantic Marrakesh to Madrid for Art Lovers. It also stores all your travel reservations -- including confirmations for car rentals, hotels and flights -- in one handy spot. Another perk: You can download a city guide before arriving and don't have to use up costly cellular data abroad. Though, if you do have a well-priced data plan that lets you roam at will, the app proves even more useful - providing up-to-date hours for restaurants and recommended sites near your location.

Google Trips is meant to complement Google's already existing travel products: Google Flights for booking and Google Maps for navigation. With the new Trips app, Google wants to accompany you through every step of your next vacation or business trip. "It combines the benefits of a guidebook with tailored information about the traveler," said Oliver Heckmann, vice president of engineering at Google Travel, "such as easy access to your hotel, flight and train reservations, and suggestions based on your past interests."

Here's the Orwellian rub - those suggestions come from Google's information on you. It mines your previous Google searches as well as your Gmail inbox, then spits back itineraries. Google Trips doesn't just function to as a digital guidebook. It also aspires to be an ace travel agent, too - one that can read your mind, or at least your inbox. Currently, I have flights booked to London, Los Angeles and Dubrovnik and within a few hours of downloading Google Trips, guides for each destination were loaded onto the app, as well as every trip I've taken in the last six years. (You can turn off that feature if it all feels like TMI).

To see just how well the super-app works on the road, I tried it out in Berlin, where I live. I first clicked on the "Things to do" section, which lists 312 options for the German capital, many categorized according to themes such as "Jewish Berlin," "Literary Berlin," "Modern Architecture," "Cold War History" and "Late-Night Clubbing." A "For You" tab curates attractions based on your Google search and maps history, though it only works if you turn on the "Web & App Activity" option in your Google account settings. When you tap on a listing, the app displays operating hours, Google user reviews and a map.

More fun is the "Day plans" section, a handful of itineraries with options like "72 Hours in Berlin," "Tragic History of the 20th Century," and "Berlin with Kids." I opted for "Memories of the Wall" and hopped on my bike. The tour includes six stops, starting at the Berlin Airlift Memorial at Tempelhof Airport. As quickly became clear upon my arrival, the monument is underwhelming. The airport itself, however, is not. Closed in 2008, Tempelhof is now a public park where you can walk, jog or bike down the runway. The app's listing failed to mention how oddly exhilarating this is or that you can spend a weekend afternoon at the beer garden pondering the Berlin Airlift's place in Cold War history.

I pedaled on to other sites the itinerary suggested, Checkpoint Charlie and the DDR Museum, using the nifty pre-plotted map to route my way. Still to come were the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Stasi Museum and the East Side Gallery. Halfway through the itinerary, I realized that, at least in this Berliner's opinion, a few sites were missing, including the DDR watchtower and the memorial to Gunter Litfin, the first wall-crossing victim to be shot (both of which I count among the city's most fascinating sites).

You can customize your own "Day plans" - it's easy to add sites from the "Things to do" section to the "Saved places" section. Or you can tap the "+" sign on the map in "Day plans" and begin pinning sites on the map that you want to visit. But by that point I was starting to miss a good old-fashioned guidebook.

I finished touring the DDR Museum around lunchtime and opened the app's "Food & Drink" section. The app organizes eateries by cuisines or other attributes (high-end or historic, for example), but irksomely, not by proximity to your current location. You can always turn to Google Maps for that, which is how I wound up at Zur Letzten Instanz, a classic Berlin tavern from 1621. It's also listed in Google Trips, but to find it I would have had to go through the restaurant listings, switched to the map, then start tapping on the dots near my location to see the name of each eatery.

After lunch, I continued on the tour, heading to the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Stasi Museum. By the time I reached my final destination, the East Side Gallery, where a long stretch of the Wall is bedecked by colorful street art, I realized, once again, how skimpily the app explains each attraction. Most sites merit a mere one-sentence descriptor followed by a string of reader reviews. The information is identical to what Google offers by default when you search for a restaurant or point of interest.

I might have set my expectations too high for Google Trips. Wouldn't it be amazing if there were an all-in-one travel app that provided detailed historical and cultural context for various sites and also led you effortlessly from A to B? One day maybe. In the meantime, Google Trips does an excellent job of navigating visitors around Berlin, which any traveler, expert or novice, will appreciate.

After I bicycled the length of the Berlin Wall, my Google Trips tour complete, I used the "Food & Drink" section to find a place to have a beer, but I didn't want to comb through all the listings looking for a nearby place. Instead, I stopped someone on the street, a local, and asked. He pointed me to Das Gift, an atmospheric craft-beer bar a 10-minute bike ride away - and not listed in the app. I might just add it.

Trips on Tap/Three Other Handy Travel-Planning Apps

TripIt This free app won't offer restaurant or museum suggestions, but it does organize all your flight, car-rental or hotel reservations, sending reminders about upcoming trips and alerting you to flight delays. For US$49 a year, TripIt Pro sends real-time alerts on delays, offers a seat tracker for your desired spot on the plane, finds alternative flights when yours is canceled and keeps track of frequent-flier miles. While I was experiencing a series of flight delays in Madrid, TripIt Pro alerted me to new delays five minutes before the gate agent made the announcement. tripit.com

TripAdvisor TripAdvisor's app lets you do something Google Trips and TripIt can't: book flights and hotels from your phone. It also lets you download maps and its guides (with information culled from Wikipedia and its own reader reviews) before the trip so you can access it without having to accrue expensive data. The app is almost too active, sending notifications prompting you to read reviews every time you sit down at a restaurant, even when you're not traveling. It's best to turn off notifications for the app when not on the road. tripadvisor.com

Pearlshare Among the newest of the travel-guide apps, Pearlshare features thematic lists curated by travel writers and other globe-trotters, meaning anyone can contribute. As well as city guides, the app offers very specific roundup lists (think: "Factory Outlet Shopping in Paris"). The design and organization is messy, but if you sift through the lists, you might find that out-of-the-way cafe few other travelers know about. At the moment it's only available for the iPhone. pearlshare.com