> 6. Possibly updates to sites I visit regularly (equivalent to a highly unreliable RSS client)

This is what annoys me the most in Google Now. It's a damn black box. I'm happy that they provide "updates to sites I visit regularly", but even more than those updates I'd like to see the list of those sites. Without that, and any kind of information about how reliable this reporting is, I have no way of trusting I won't miss an "important update". I just don't know, and Google Now does nothing to reassure me.

I don't really rely on them to show me important updates. I see the stories they provide me with as more of a friendly suggestion that they've found something I might like or might of missed. I don't get them very often and I really like the spontaneity of them appearing when I'm not normally looking for them.

The only time they annoyed me was when picking up a false article about Breaking bad being renewed. I shared the headline with several people before realizing it was a fake article.

http://www.businessinsider.com/breaking-bad-season-6-hoax-20...

I may be assuming ill intent where there is none, but I feel like that's part of the plan of the entities (Google, FaceBook) that automate recommendations: get you to discard that nagging feeling like you're missing something of actual importance, and just get your info from the feed. If I were nefarious and had their real estate, I would certainly like to not be transparent so that I could manipulate things without people being able to tell or complain.

I've turned most of these off. The weather is useful as is commute information, but site updates and things Google think I might like based on my searches are generally poor. There was a recent reminder not to forget to vote and occasional "are you interested in such-and-such an popular event" cards, but these never seem to have an option to prevent recurrences.

Parking information would be useful if it were both accurate (it isn't, due to taking a park and ride bus) and consistent. Like many Google Now cards it seems difficult to predict whether it will turn up or not.

Another trick it used to do was show me cards with navigation information to somewhere I'd searched for, usually the night before a trip. But, when I got into my car at 6am the next day such information was nowhere to be seen and I'd have to search for it again. Now I save the location in the calendar so at least there's a link to click, causing Google Now to remind me to leave on time after I've already left, sometimes when I'm nearly there.

Overall, it's not a useful product and relies upon data being collected which I'd rather wasn't. The only reason I leave it on is so that I can dictate reminders to my watch, which I find a very useful feature. The requirement to use Google Now for this last feature seems rather arbitrary to me.