Google Now’s Staff Exodus Reveals Hurdles for New CEO Pichai
recode.net
recode.net
I think the article was trying to couch this more as a "barbarians at the gate" piece with Microsoft in the role of the Huns, but that analogy falls pretty flat given the amount of innovation going on in both companies.
What I found really interesting is that Apple isn't really mentioned. Yesterday I got a push notification on my iPad about all the new things Siri could do. I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that but I'm guessing the race is on to make the voice inputs more functional. That, for me at least, is a part that makes something like Google now useful or not. I've been developing a habit of adding reminders for things to do when I get into work and that helps keep things from dropping off the plate, prior to location based reminders it really wasn't frictionless enough for me. And the pre-processing of things like flight iteneraries has stuff like the flight confirmation code easily accessed.
The bottom line is I can see the path to a mobile device I talk to, and it talks back, much like an executive secretary, to keep the important bits in order so I can focus on other things. Is Cortana winning that battle? Siri? Google? Hard to say, but the battle is definitely engaged.
I can absolutely guarantee that my ending question will have a meaningful answer, either one or none of these systems will be the one that everyone uses, the other two will be the "niche" ones that hardly anybody uses (and I say this as a diehard Amiga fan boy). And as much as I might dislike the choice the market makes, I understand that once critical mass is achieved, it becomes economically unviable to continue investing in the "losing" technology.
I do have a Moto 360 and bark commands to that more often and I find that I keep going back to that to send me reminders. I believe it uses whatever is behind the reminders infrastructure in Google Inbox/Keep. Other than the fact that it sometimes has a hard time recognizing my voice it works well for the most part and I'm so busy that it is the simplest way for me to keep track of things in the moment.
I tried to use it while in the US. The information it pushed to me was right more than half of the time, useful about 5% of the time.
Here in Europe it's pretty useless. No cards or no relevant cards.
Day to day, I get all my weather (current location and upcoming locations based on travel itinerary), my financial interests' status (based on google finance portfolio), traffic (based on calendar event locations).
Occasionally, it really saves my bacon. I was about to head over to JFK in a few hours to board a flight to the west coast when Washington DC suddenly became a massive no-fly zone and dozens of flights got cancelled on the spot[0]. I had no idea, and probably wouldn't have known until I got to the airport a few hours later and reached the gate. Except—Google Now alerted me that my flight was cancelled the moment it happened (even before news broke about what caused it). Immediately we hopped on the phone and got another flight booked, before the airline itself even started rebooking flights. In fact, the airline never even bothered to alert us that the flight was cancelled.
Similar situations have happened with traffic through construction, presumably pulled from Waze alerts ("hey your next appointment is at X, and normally it would take 25min to get there but today it'll take 40min because this freeway is completely closed").
Google Now is basically a collection of a dozen services that I rather not bother manage independently, all without any interaction or signup. Yes, it "reads my email" and my calendar and the queries I make through it.
Another fun example: I was researching which phone I wanted to buy next, so I was googling a bunch of phones that haven't been released yet. Few weeks later, it pops up on Google Now "hey, you searched for this and there's news about it today."
Lots of cute little surprises when you travel, too. Entering a new country? It'll show you the local currency exchange and the timezone difference (and nearby attractions that I often ignore).
Anyways, it's a great integrated experience and just keeps getting better over time.
[0]. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/15/dc-new-york-...
The problem may be that those apps are actually aimed at such a small portion of the earth's population (read: frequent business travelers) that maybe it is not sustainable.
I don't use it every day though, so I do wish it was one easy tap away from the lock screen if I see an unexpected slowdown (that's about as far as I can manage without actively looking at my phone).
The weather info is always useful, quickly comparing weather at the current location to home is nice.
Transport is often relevant (if only Google Maps was aware of our U-Bahn instead of suggesting a 3h journey involving 5 busses), and it's helpful that you are warned when the last train goes (before midnight).
The scanning of emails for information is clever. I was quite surprised that it managed to pick up local train tickets and reminded me on the day, and it helps keep track of packages ordered through various sites.
Nearby photos and "things to do" can be nice to see, and in some places it will offer you "information about this place" (only observed in the Netherlands).
Sometimes it also showed some interesting blogs.
Some things are entirely useless or annoying to me, like the "breaking news" articles of american tabloids, or translations of "good morning" to German while in a train in Germany (as if Google doesn't know I speak German).
The Now cards link to more information, which makes it easy to explore more. In my experience, the cards are near-100% accurate.
That said, I believe what the article says - I don't feel like Google Now has changed meaningfully in a long time. The other day I got an alert saying that app-specific cards are being enabled, but I'm yet to see one.
It'll show me when webcomics I regularly visit are updated (although that's a 0% on the useful scale since I either have them registered in feedly or in a bookmark folder categorized by their update schedule).
What's really nice though for me is recommended stories. It surfaces content I wouldn't see otherwise. I get a little bit of use out of that.
Primarily though, I haven't found a lot of use from it yet. I just recently got package tracking and it hasn't been incredibly useful yet, and I never check it for Weather like I should.
I guess it isn't quite useful yet. Would be more useful if Mint Bills plugged into it and kept me on my toes about upcoming bills, or the normal mint integration did.. anything.
Duolingo integration is interesting, but not entirely useful.
It makes me very self-conscious about my embarassing interests sometimes though.
On iOS, I almost never use it. Its value-add is not strong enough without the OS-level integration. The only thing I'll open it for on iOS is flight status updates, but Inbox provides that value too now.
When I've travelling I live by it.
I don't keep appointments, I never book planes or hotels, I don't drive anywhere that I need directions, I don't follow sports teams, I don't order enough stuff online to care about tracking them, so on and so on.
To me, siri/cortana are aiming to be the method of conversational interaction for your phone in the future whereas Now is trying to be the intelligent/interactive notifications platform.
That seems like the fundamental difference.
Presenting cards/notifications about something before I ask for it will always be a superior interface to one that requires you to act, IMO.
I like
1. stepping out of work after a 13 hour day and pulling up my phone and google telling me which way I need to drive home because there is a 20min delay due to an accident. It's not something I think about everyday to check, just like checking the weather at 6am in the morning. Sure if my life was perfect I would but it's not. Google does these simple tasks for me and turns bad days into better ones but not adding on another 45min on the way home when I have already had a long day.
2. airports/new city? I wake up in the morning google already knows if my flight has been rerouted, the potential for delay due to weather, and whatever airport or new city I'm in, it tells me where there is to eat and what to do. Sure there are plenty of additional apps I could download if I was in the "in crowd" in san fran and knew the best ones for each city, but I'm not, and usually I'm busy so I want to have 15 highly ranked restaurants give me the best selection.
If I'm there on vacation sure I'll put more effort into finding off the beaten path places but honestly google now is helpful for people distracted with their everyday life.
3. At one point I was with visiting my boyfriend while he was on a business trip in Flagstaff. Google obviously knows we are dating. My phone was dead but the reminder for my flight came up on his phone. Sure there is a separate "app" just for that, per airline and then I could share my flight with my bf but WHY? Google already knew where he was, knew I was most likely flying there to visit him and gave him updates on my schedule 24hrs before hand all the way until I got home safely, as well as myself. Easy, one less thing to worry about in 2 peoples busy working lives. Once I send him my flight info, google picked right up on it. No "extra" apps needed. Didn't have to think to remember to do this.
4. I use google keep notes like an OCD freak as well so its nice to have what I've decided it important to me as well as things that I'd like to check if I remembered but google already has it staring back at me on my screen when I wake up in the morning or walk into a crowded airport or think I'm having an normal ride home.
I also (and for most young kids in big cities) have a busy social life and go to lots of music shows, but I go to alot so I don't remember the time date and price of every one so it's just nice to have if I don't do the same thing everyday.
It makes driving home, navigating airports, remembering to wish your college roommate happy birthday on the way to your rerouted terminal and also knowing you have an extra 10minutes to go to jamba juice that you didn't know was around the corner so you don't have to live off airplane food.
These are things that make my day alot nicer, alot more functional. I don't know what all the fuss about google now is...
That being said, the implications on privacy and how this data is stored and shared is an entirely different story from how convenient it is, but I am commenting on its usefulness, which other people don't seem to agree with.
Pichai didn't work on Android, or even search or AdWords or what have you. He worked on a browser toolbar before working on Chrome. Chrome seems to have constantly won internal battles at Google (look at how long Google resisted making Android tablets in favor of giving ChromeOS tablets time to develop), even as Chrome is probably the less successful of the two. It shouldn't be surprising that he lets search take over a project that started in Android.
Eric Schmidt was on the Apple board. I wonder how much credit goes to their prescience and how much of it goes to their inside knowledge of the facts.