Why .now()? (Objectify)

Question

Why would I ever want to load an Objectify entity asynchronously? And what does asynchronous loading actually mean?

According to Objectify documentation about loading,

Answer 1

The Google Cloud Datasore was designed to give the user a positive relational and non-relational experience, essentially the best of both worlds. Google datastore is a NoSQL database which offers eventual consistency for improved scalability but also gives you the option to choose strong consistency.

This article by Google, Balancing Strong and Eventual Consistency with Google Cloud Datastore, will go a long way to answering some of your questions. It explains the eventual consistency model which is key to understanding how the datastore works under the hood in relation to your question.