[ajross]

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.

[dsirijus]

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.

[jmhain]

"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.

[buster]

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..

[hayksaakian]

Out of curiosity, which 10.1 do you use? I've been on CM 10 stable since it came out, but I'm not sure what's stable recently.

[tuxracer]

Having tried it on both the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 I can say it's incredibly faster on the Nexus 4 (stock ROM).

[ajross]

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...