Google Now is, actually, one of the core Android features about which I care the least. On my CM10.1 Galaxy Nexus, it's really quite slow (3-4 seconds to do anything when I try to click on the search bar or swipe it up from the bottom of the screen). The default cards are at best only mildly useful, though sometimes impressive: it will tell me driving times to places that I just searched for, it will tell me the weather, it will warn me about notable traffic on the way home. Amusingly it just alerted me to the fact that Adria Richards had been fired by SendGrid.

Basically: it occasionally impresses me, but doesn't actually help me all that much. It just doesn't enter my radar most of the time. Even as a search interface it's too slow to be my primary gateway: I'll preferentially pull up chrome and type the search into the URL bar there.

But if you set your Settings to the right items, you enable all your Search History, and everything else, and you have a modern phone like a Nexus 4, Google Now is amazing. Really, really amazing. It's definitely there and it works fantastically well, if you care to set it up right.

The voice search is pretty good, but the travel organisation features are killer. I don't know what I'd do without it.

None of these are things I couldn't live without; most just save a click or two. But I find them useful.

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.

I look at it every day for traffic warnings, an overview of my schedule, reminders and updates, and interesting stories.

I mostly use it in the mornings for practical stuff and during the day when I'm bored for interesting news stories.

It's slowly moving into the must have category.

I've never quite figured out what's up with Google Now—I have it on my phone, and I hear it's supposed to be some sort of (semi) intelligent assistant type of thing, but so far it doesn't seem to do very much at all, much less anything "intelligent."

On my phone, it gives me weather info every day (which is nice), and dutifully tells me how to get to work in the morning and return home home at night (thanks Google Now!) but ... other than that, it basically does nothing.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some setting I need to set ("intelligence: on") that will make Google Now suddenly start telling me what upcoming movies I might like, or interrupting my dinner to tell me about that great TV show I'm about to miss?

When Google isn't making my skin crawl / fists clench in fury lately, they are making me scratch my head.

Why on earth isn't Google Now, easily one of the most amazing things they've done recently and hugely competitive give how much big-data crunching and user profiling it requires, available as a widget on Android? Why is there no Now api that other apps can push cards to?

Why is there no Google Now launcher?

Now still feels like some interesting parallel world on Android (while Google+ feels like some uninteresting parallel world everywhere else).

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.

There's also all sort of other idiocies. For instance I only got google now recently and then I traveled back to my home country for a couple of days. And what google now did was bombard me (hundreds literally) with cards for directions to every bloody address I've ever searched for in that country (months or even years ago). Wtf?

I really appreciate the complexity of a system like now, but as it is it would be better if they turned it off. It is broken.