Question: Who here uses Google Now?
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.
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.