Google Now was the better phone assistant, no AI or LLMs needed

The era of Google Now and Inbox was a golden era.

Going back to regular Gmail from Inbox was what finally broke my faith in Google and I was a proper fanboy too.

I have a very similar story. I was the most Google centric person I know in 2014 and 2015. I grew disillusioned after they killed Inbox. I realized that tech doesn't always get better with time. Sometimes the money motive leads to tech actively getting worse for users
- It's years later and they still haven't incorporated inbox features into Gmail like they said they would and probably never will
Not to be dramatic but same. For me it was Now, Inbox, then Play Music; the last being the final straw. The replacements for those services being notably worse showed they don’t give two shits about the end user experience. And don’t get me started on the messaging debacle.
- Play Music was brilliant. Now we have that POS named YouTube Music that is impossible to manage your songs, because that turd mixes songs with regular YouTube videos and playlists that have nothing to do with music.
  
  I have Tidal now, way better than anything else. Screw.you, Google.
- Yes, since Play Music went down I switched to Spotify. Not really happy either but the best alternative for the moment IMO. Also slowly migrating my email to proton.
- Now, Inbox, Reader and Play Music. Not that it was available in my country, but I think Google fibre was around the same time. I guess you could throw Google Chrome pulling internet standards forward rather than regressing them, into that box too.
  
  Google was really on to a run of genuine winners at that point, weren't they? It's kinda a shame to see that all of the replacements really still are several steps behind what we had.
  
  I know now that this trajectory almost seems inevitable for any big tech company now, but imagine where we would be now if Google had kept making genuinely good products and improvements.
Inbox was great, at least for my personal use. I'm not sure how much I would've liked at as a work email client, Gmail would probably have been better, but inbox seemed to 'just work' for my personal email needs. Felt so bad going back to Gmail. And Gmail still sucks just as bad several years later.
Same story here. I'll never understand why they canned Inbox when it was clearly superior to vanilla Gmail.
- Having worked in corporate America for some time now, I would guess it was 95% internal politics. Whoever ran the inbox team didn't play the game right.
Was Google Now even usable outside the US? I remember it was pretty useless for my use case scenario back in the days... But I used the dumbed out version on iOS though.

What was the experience with Android phones outside the US?

It was genuinely useful (the update cards for appointments or travel were brilliant), didn't get in the way and wasn't infested with "news". I say "news" when I mean rage/clickbait and adverts.

It was too effective at helping us use our phones less, which means fewer ads viewed. Some functionality such as the commute time cards came back, but it not nearly as effective fashion. And nothing has really replicated now on tap's abilities.
- I'm curious where Nothing goes if they can keep momentum.
I was genuinely impressed with google now. Wether the complaints about it being to intrusive, or just lack ad revenue killed it. But for a short time my life was really improved by this service running on my phone.

Google On Tap was unreal, hold the button and it would recognise all the text on the screen and give you definitions and such. Only one of these type of products that got use out of me

I've learned my lesson before. Google products don't last, so I prefer to not get used to them at all. I'm only slightly confident in the search engine and the mail existing. Although not sure in what form.

With how Google marched backwards on cloud storage since the turn of the decade, GMail is getting even less promising. Once my wife and I finally move out of here, I'm going 100% self hosted, setting up my own email server, et al
- I work at a small company and one of my many hats is “the only IT guy”. I promise you, you don’t want to self host email. You will always be in spam filter hell and you’ll never really know if the email you sent actually made it to the destination until it’s too late.
  
  Buy a domain, pay for an email provider, and hook them up. If you ever get upset with your email provider, find a new one and switch out the connections. That way, your email address never changes but where it’s stored can be.
- @thanevim @dantheclamman @kubica Unfortunately, that's not something you really wanna do. Depending on your domain, it might take years before your emails stop going to the spam box.

Because it was designed for very specific tasks. A specialized tool will always be better at the things it's designed for. Just like a graphics card in a computer is better at processing graphics than a general use CPU even if the CPU is running at much faster speeds.

But if you didn't care about those specific tasks or utilize those specific services, then it wasn't that useful.

A think a lot of people commute to work, take flights, have calendar appointments and reservations. Yet their new services are worse at helping me keep track of those things than something that came out years ago with simpler technology.

I miss Google Now so much as well.

Vector art design era > Material design era
- Material UI is pretty good, nothing in GNow was reliant on the UI, they could have worked just as fine with Material UI.

Yes. Shout it louder for those in the back!

Although Google's invasive nature is now pretty well known, I really liked Google Now back when it was a thing. This had everyone sideloading google launcher APKs, then later on installing rootless pixel launcher on their phones and doing all kinds of jank to get it running.

Nothing comes close to the contextual cards, traffic alerts, next public transport times, day schedule, etc. If you needed some info, chances were it was a swipe away from your homescreen already waiting for you.

I've since moved on to Niagara launcher though.

Edit: add pre-pixel launcher

Yes. Shout it louder for those in the back!

But not too loud or the wrong Google Assistant will hear it and you'll get an incoherent answer muttered from the other room about not being able to do that instead of being answered by the phone in your hand.
- God that's accurate. Or how telling your phone to launch Kodi on the CCwGTV, it showing you feedback that recognizes the name (eg "Launch Kodi on Main Google TV", but still coming back with, "I can't do that"
  
  You're just launching an Android app! Don't give me that bullshit!

Google Now was superior in every way

Wish I could still use Google now.

It's better to rely on none of these and return to AOSP stock! Reject Google!

Reminiscing how Google Now and Cortana were in their prime breaks my heart. Siri on the other hand hasn’t gotten worse from what I can tell, but where’s the improvement?

Honestly in the Age of Enshittification I’ll settle for not getting worse, but I rather not.

I just don't understand why they removed Jen Taylor's voice from Cortana. That was... the whole point of Cortana, IMO. Without Taylor's voice model, Cortana is just another soulless, half-baked digital assistant that doesn't do what you want it to half of the time. All of the charm came from the fact that it was literally Cortana from Halo.

No assistant is best 👍

Meh, i can just use firefox.

For what? This article isn't about browsers, this is about a digital assistant app.
- Not OP but I'm the same; I use Firefox to do stuff. All I need is a web browser and do it manually.
  
  On my Android phone I've turned off assistant, and use Nova launcher's search bar to open Firefox and search on DuckDuckGo.
  
  Assistants really aren't that great; you sacrifice privacy for a tool that can launch a search for you when you can just type it in yourself - whats the point? The only time I've ever found an assistant app vaguely useful was when I tried it while driving. But after a couple of days I decided to turn it off again because I didn't want the phone listening all the time just so I could occasionally say "Ok Google, play the news". I found it too poor to manage Google Maps. I might try it again for a longer trip, but day to day, don't get the point.
  
  I'd also feel self concious using it out and about, and lose privacy not just to Google but to every rando I walk past. And then I don't get in the habit of using it in my own home. Add to that the general creepy feeling of devices always listening and it's a hard pass. I suspect I'm not alone in that.
  
  I've seen reports suggesting Amazon is struggling to justify Alexa, because apart from a novelty and basic voice control for playing music it just doesn't make them money and people don't use it that much. They were hoping people would use it go shopping but who wants to shop without seeing something? I'm not going to say "Alexa buy me a TV" and I'm also not going to say "Alexa order me some washing powder". I've honestly never see anyone in real life saying "Ok Google" or "Siri"; the only times I've ever seen them used is chatting in a bar and someone is showing off something silly.
  
  As far I can tell, Voice Assistants are just gimmicks on phones. Cortana was utterly useless on PCs and died a death. About the only useage I can see them being useful for is as fancy switches for smart homes. "Alexa, turn on the lights". That doesn't exactly require high end artificial intelligence. Maybe useful on PCs in the long term if they can actually do sophisticated tasks like analyse a spreadsheet or summarise a paper for you. But day to day now? Pretty pointless to me.