Android 4.1 Jelly Bean review

Unfortunately, Google Now is not quite as adept at searching for content and apps on the phone itself as I would like. Strangely, you're more likely to get on-phone results (such as apps) if you type your question rather than speak it. Those phone results are available from a voice search, but all too-often they're buried way at the bottom in Google's list of search filters.

One important thing to understand about Google Now is that you’re really not meant to spend time setting up and managing your cards. Rather, you’re just supposed to use Google search as you normally would (preferably extensively) — to search for restaurants, get directions, check sports scores, and the like. As you do, Google keeps an eye on your activities and then offers up the cards it believes are relevant to your interests. The idea is that simply through organic use of your phone, Google Now will be able to predict what kind of information you may need and have it ready for you with a simple swipe up from the home button — and in some cases Google also gives you notifications that there are new cards available.

As of today, Google Now includes cards for weather, traffic, flights, sports, appointments, places, transit, translation, currency, and time back home. When and why these cards appear either in Google Now or in the notification area can be something of a mystery. Transit, for example, is designed to show you bus and train times when you’re standing at the station, but I had mixed results getting it to appear. Sports is meant to show you scores from your favorite teams — but I’ve also had Google Now present directions to the stadium as though I were going to commute there for work (if only).

If you insist on trying to manage your cards, you can dig into settings for each of them and set "priorities" that theoretically adjust when and how aggressively they appear. I can only hope that Google’s attempts to accurately predict which information I do (and don’t) care about becomes more accurate with time.

If you have reservations about Google knowing everything about you, a new feature where it actually begins to act on that knowledge will be disconcerting. It might not help that instead of Apple's more personable "Siri" personality, in Google Now you can say "Google" out loud in order to start your search. You can, of course, opt-out of using it. That said, the feature is a very Google kind of project: it feels a little bit beta, it's fully integrated into Google's web offerings, and it's constantly offering up Google searches. If you're a heavy Google services user, there's no other company that knows more about who you are and what you want to know. In that sense, there's a certain poetry about Google Now actually trying to provide all of this information for you — beautiful, creepy poetry.

When Google Now works, it’s something of a wonder. Looking at your phone towards the end of the day and seeing the ball score and the traffic for your commute home is great, as is wandering into a neighborhood at dinner time and having some restaurant suggestions ready and waiting. On the other hand, I am spending quite a lot of time swiping away cards I don’t want. I am subscribed to a very large number of calendars for work and I don’t need cards for all of those appointments. In another case, I searched for a random flight for a test, but now I’m getting alerts for that flight every day.

In my testing, it took Google Now a few days to collect enough information to begin presenting useful cards on a regular basis. Google says that it's more of a platform than a feature, and so we can and should expect that it will only improve over time. It's already proven useful, but I'll need more time with Google Now before I would call it essential.

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