You know, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks it's possible that Schmidt wanted to force Apple's hand. Now Apple have no choice but to approve the app despite the fact that it probably does replicate some functionality already built into iOS through Siri.
The Google Now app on Android is probably one of the best crafted, smoothest experiences i have seen, no comparison to the crappy facebook app. So, let's hope it will have a similar quality on iOS! :)
Are you sure you aren't talking about the Google+ app, which is a better comparison to Facebook (and about which I agree: it's just fantastically great).
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.
My experience exactly. It needs to function order of magnitude faster, and guesswork it does is still pretty dodgy.
Only one 'wow' was when it offered me currency exchange values when I was abroad. And then, Chrome stepped up with ads and search in a different language and ruined the moment.
That being said, it does show promise, but it's certainly not there yet.
"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)."
Try disabling "Hotword Detection" in the voice section of Google Now settings. I also run CM10.1 on my GNex (toro), and that made it open and respond almost instantly.
You're right, i did confuse Google Now and Google+, d'oh! :(
I don't get Google Now, though. It's rather slow and i still haven't seen much something that helps me on a day-to-day base. I don't know if other countries see different offers, but it basically shows me the weather (wow, have that already) and how long i may take home (or not, because it get's it wrong).
And for pure searching it just starts too slow, imo (using a Galaxy Nexus here).
I can see that it is a little bit faster now then a few months ago and there are many more cards in the preferences.. but it still only shows me weather and driving time. The Google Voice recognition works surprisingly well nowadays..
The N4 is just a much faster machine, so sure. So to some extent we're just rehashing the "upgrade cycle" arguments of 15 years ago. Google may want to assume the capabilities of a 2G Snapdragon S4 board, but the 1G OMAP4 in my pocket isn't going anywhere until my contract expires...
Either way, all signs point to Google Now showing up in the app store soon. Google (via Eric Schmidt's evidently mistaken comments) wouldn't say this if it wasn't at least ready to go, and Apple probably wouldn't comment now if they weren't going to let it in.
How does releasing an iOS version of Google Now benefit Google?
Edit: Don't downvote me, I really want to know. It seems to me that Apple is Google's main competitor in the smartphone business. Why would Google give Google Now away to Apple, when it's currently something that give Android an edge over iOS?
Google makes money from each search. My numbers are probably dated, but at one point it was something like 13 cents a search on the average. Glancing at their 2011 revenue and making a naive approximation by dividing by the number of searches gives about 2 cents per search. Therefore, more people using Google search means more revenue. Also the experience might create a different route to revenue for them. Suppose you start to like Google Maps then Google Now, then maybe Google+, then maybe your next device is a Nexus rather than an iPad.
But Eric Schmidt did not say that the app was submitted:
“You’ll need to discuss that with Apple” (at around 17:50). “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t,”