I can't live without it.

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-...

Although in your world that might feel like an app that everyone would use ... most of us go to a job in the same city in the same location day after day.

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.

The traffic alerts, weather, game scores, and appointment reminder are pretty nice, even if you don't travel. The events near by could be useful too. It is very convenient if you have an android phone, but I doubt I would miss it much if it wasn't there.

Despite driving the same exact route every day, it has saved my bacon when it snows, routing me around accidents. Same for construction, it answers the question "is the construction zone going to make me 2 minutes or 15 minutes behind my usual schedule?"

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).

A lot of people drive in places with significant traffic, and would choose alternate routes if they knew ahead of time of traffic problems.

I also use it a lot and find it very useful. Most of the time it's spot on, however one time I was searching for a compiler error code at work and the next day Now had started tracking flight information for some flight that happened to have the same flight code as the compiler error. :)

Ha, that is funny. Yea, I was researching flights that day (to find alternate routes from NYC to SFO) and by the end of the day I had like 5 flight alert cards on my Google Now. They're easy enough to swipe away, but it is amusing in a mildly-embarrassing kind of way.

It really disappoints me that Twitter never became this.

I feel like I'm using it constantly. I even find myself creating appointments more often for what I know is coming up just so I can get those departure reminders. I've uninstalled the Flixter app because it seems to show me movie recommendations every time I'm about to lookup showtimes. I almost never open a package tracking or travel reservation email any more. It just seems to save me time.

I wouldn't say it's entirely useless in Europe.

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).

I use it in Phoenix, Arizona and think it's one of Google's best products. It's not something you have to actively check to get the benefits and the cards it delivers are usually relevant and useful (like weather, travel times to appointments and location based information cards). IMO, you're (likely) already giving Google so much personal information, Now is their way of making something useful of it for you.

I use it so much that I barely feel like I'm using it. To me it's just part of my phone. I slide to the right, I see my agenda, my next flight or booking or last bus, the weather, news I'm interested in. It's a 5-second interaction most of the time. It doesn't need to be more. (I'm in the Netherlands)

London-ish based, regularly pootle around the UK. Very useful. Massively plugged in to Google services though, so suspect it knows everything it could need to to be useful.

Google Now is very good in San Francisco: Now predicts general-interest items such as news and weather, and also immediate-vicinity items such as metro train schedules as I walk by the metro station, and movie schedules as I walk by a theater.

The Now cards link to more information, which makes it easy to explore more. In my experience, the cards are near-100% accurate.

I use it a lot. It pushes down alerts when my subway lines are delayed, as well as the status of various deliveries I have from Amazon.com and the like. Also sports results, which I sometimes care about.

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 use it fairly often. Using Google for everything it's started to pick up my habits.

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 tends more and more to replace feedly for me, plus it catches websites I didn't care to add to feddly yet.

It makes me very self-conscious about my embarassing interests sometimes though.

I think it would be hilarious if Google started recommending fetishistic websites.

I think in some form it's "the future". I'm not sure they've found the best way to expose it yet but the underlying functionality can be pretty amazing and useful.

I used it a lot when I carried an Android phone. It was useful for summarizing important emails, delivery notifications, reminders to leave for appointments, and things like that. The deep OS integration and Android's notification system made it possible.

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.

I use it here in Paris, France. Super useful.

Australia here: I use it frequently (maybe twice daily) for commute updates and news stories.

When I've travelling I live by it.

It seems nice to me, but doesn't fit my lifestyle at all.

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.

Until this thread I believed that "Google Now" was that voice search interface with the irritating tendency to pop up and start listening to whatever is going on in the room at the slightest provocation.

I found it extremely useful when using public transport in Japan, and telling me the last bus time in Dublin is useful too.