I've been using Google Now for a couple of months, and overall I would give it a grade of
meh.
One thing I've found is that it does do a good job of giving travel time and best route to upcoming events or appointments,
if and only if the item is (a) in your Google Calendar (how else will it know about it?) and (b) has a place filled in in the Location field. The latter is crucial: it doesn't bother giving alerts for Calendar items that don't have locations, because as far as it knows you don't have to go anywhere to do them. IOW, it's not trying to replace the notification system in your calendar app. As for the Location field, I find that it's pretty broad-minded: you can put in an exact street address, a Google Maps link, an item from your Contacts, a recognizable business name, etc.
OTOH.... I started using it while on a trip on the opposite side of the USA from home, during which I was also using Google Maps a lot to get to various destinations; and for days afterward it would tell me how to get to a restaurant we'd been to the day before, as if we were planning to go there again. Sheesh.
I just updated to the newest version, and I discovered when I tapped on the silly little wand thingy in the lower right of the screen that it had 2 places set: Home (correct) and Work--and for Work it had some random address from our trip across the country! I work from home, I really have no work address and no commute; but I found that it was impossible to delete the Work location. The best I could do was edit it to be the same as Home. Looking forward to whatever foolishness that generates.
Tapping the link to the online "Help" (
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3061271), which seems to be for a previous version of Google Now, I find the information that "The home and work locations shown here are the same as those shown in your Location History dashboard." And of course when I go to that dashboard, there are no Home and Work locations.
One last: I don't know if this will continue after the most recent update, but many times I've been sitting at my desk at home, and Google Now would pop up a card informing me that it's a 9-minute drive to home. I've got all the location services turned on (including WiFi, though WiFi on the phone is not turned on), but apparently it thinks I'm actually sitting underneath a cell tower some distance away. And that I have an urgent need to get home.
So, yeah, a work in progress. Just creepy enough to be worrisome, not quite well-made enough to be 100% reliable, or even useful, all the time.
Great! Now, perform some searches of titles of things or your favorite whatever.
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