"Google Now" Moving Well Beyond Search, Becoming Mobile Assistant [Search Engine Land]

Proactive "predictive power" (plus plausible privacy?...)

"Google Now and improved Voice Search, on Android and the new iOS Google search app, are central to that new experience. (Danny wrote a piece comparing Siri and the Google iOS app for the iPhone last week.) Google Now turns the cliche “answers not links” from a marketing slogan into something real.
Google Voice Search + Google Now together with Siri hold profound implications for the future of “mobile search.” Siri and, increasingly, Google Voice Search + Google Now are conditioning mobile users to interact with smartphones in very different ways than how people have historically searched on the PC. Mobile or virtual assistant is the new metaphor."

"Google Now" Moving Well Beyond Search, Becoming Mobile Assistant