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Comment by eddieroger | Hacker News Reader

I fell for Google Now when I booted my old Nexus to test test something, and Google Now had read through my emails and showed me a tracking status for a UPS package I was expecting. I was pretty jealous of that functionality, but never convinced to go back to Android just for one feature. Now, I really have no reason.

It's also pretty telling of something when more iOS devices have Google Now than Android devices do.

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I had a similar "whoa" moment a couple of weeks ago.

Google alerted me that I should leave for Santa Barbara "now".

Which was really, really weird for me, since I was already halfway there (from Phoenix).

Apparently, it had read through my emails, seen a receipt for sigur ros tickets from ticketmaster, figured out where I was, and already calculated how long it would take me to get there.

That is insanely awesome.

Or, terrifying. Take your pick :)

I don't know if Google Now is that clever.

If you had an event in a calendar which had something in the "Location"-field it took the location you should be at from there.

Still it is a "whoa" moment. :)

It finds hotel reservations and flight itineraries in your email, and shows cards based off of those as well.

I've had it recognize order confirmations for concert tickets to a show a couple of hours away, parse them, and automatically create a notification with navigation at an appropriate time to leave.

How is it awesome that it told you to leave, when in fact you had already left? Shouldn't it have alerted you before you left?

If she'd forgotten, it would have been an excellent reminder.

I'd guess he left earlier than he strictly had to to make the specific appointment. The "leave now" is presumably just "if you want to be on-time", not "if you want to be on-time and do some antiquing and grab some lunch first".

But I guess it should know you're on your way if you appear to be moving along the route to the event.

Or to the restaurant around the corner that just happens to be on the same path.

I guess if you look like you're on the way, and it looks like you're going to make it on time then it shouldn't prompt.

If you do get to the restaurant around the corner and stop then it should realise that it may need to remind you.

Anyway, I've signed up for it today. I like the idea in principle, and I understand how hard it is to get this right. I assume it will get better over time as they tweak it, so it's worth giving them a fair crack of the whip.

There's absolutely no way for it to infer that 100%. How many times have people started driving to an event or the grocery store and taken a turn towards home halfway there? I'd rather be reminded at an appropriate time even if it's unnecessary than not be reminded at all.

Me too.

I was robbing a bank and Google alerted me that I should leave "now".

Which was really weird for me, since I had a lot of gold to transport.

Apparently, it read through my emails, seen a glitch from other galaxy, figured out portal has opened, and already calculated how long it would take for the aliens to invade the earth.

I'm going to assume that it only looks at your gmail? or any email account connect to your phone?

It only integrates with the Gmail app on the device. There are specific cards that will work _only_ if you have the Gmail app pulling in email and it's enabled.

> It's also pretty telling of something when more iOS devices have Google Now than Android devices do.

It's also pretty telling of something when you can make such blind and broad claims when Android is holding significant lead to iOS across the board.

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