Why doesn't holding down the home key bring up my running apps?

[KimDCBM]

In order to be sure I had no apps running in the background, I used to hold down the home key (the little house) and all the running items would be displayed. I could swipe them away and be sure they were no longer running. My phone said it needed updating this morning, so I allowed it. Now when I hold down the home key, Google popped up. I was able to eliminate that, but I don't know how to find out what apps are running like I used to. Holding down the home key does nothing. Does anyone know how to fix this and return it to how it used to be? Thank you.

 

[Rukbat]

What you saw wasn't apps running in the background, it was recently used apps, whether they were still running or not. Swiping them away just took them off the list, it didn't stop them from running.

Android has a vwery good memory manager, it kills those apps that need to be killed when they need to be killed. Killing an app yourself is, at best, useless. At worst, if Android needs a process provided by that app, it'll reload the app after you kill it, slowing the phone down and wasting battery. They should leave su in the kernel but remove the ability to kill apps unless you can use a Linux terminal. They did things backwards.

Short version - stop worrying about what's running in the background - if it is, it should be.

Long version - Multitasking the Android Way (written by someone who actually wrote parts of Android, so she should know).