Totally. I've told a number of people that Google Now is the first "original" killer app on smartphones. Meaning: smart phones are essential for email, texting, nav, photos and browsing. But none of those originated there. Google Now did, and is amazing.

You're absolutely right.

Some time ago I had the idea of a 'travel bulletin' app using twitter, that would feature a location and info hash and allow you to subscribe to different levels of notification for different parts of your commute or where you live etc.

It was eventually scrapped due to the complexity of the user interface and the lack of ability to adapt to a user's habits. Google Now blows my idea out of the water by providing that up front information from the users habits.

It has the potential to completely seal the mobile market for Google. I know I won't buy another device that doesn't have this feature.

You can almost sense Google doing something right finally! I'm surprised it didn't create the buzz it actually deserves, IMO the most underrated new product of 2012.

Well I never even knew it existed. Apparently you have to turn it on for your apps domain if you use a google apps account. And it is hard to find http://www.24100.net/2012/12/enable-google-now-google-apps-f...

Not many people knew of Google Now. I was surprised why Google didn't go overboard to publicize it.

Apple will have to respond to this, I think. This is really what the possibility of mobile computing is, not just our information anywhere we want it.

Apple will find it really hard to better this!