Remember that Eric Schmidt and Apple talked across the air at the Google Big Tent conference in India in March? When a reporter asked when the Google Now service would be launched on iOS, Eric Schmidt replied, "You have to ask Apple about this", meaning that Google Now's access to the App Store was blocked; A month later, we can finally use Google as a personal assistant service on iOS.

On Monday local time, Google Search released version 3.0 in the App Store, with built-in Google Now function.

Of course, Google Now is not a separate application, but a function of Google Search. Users can open it in settings. Unfortunately, the Google Now function cannot be used in China at present. Up to now, this newly updated version of Google Search 3.0.0 has not been launched in the App Store in China.

I installed and tried it for a while. Voice search can be used normally in China, but Google Now in the background cannot be opened. If it is enabled, the superimposed cards will be displayed at the bottom of the main interface after the Google Search application is started.

Baris Gultekin, director of product management at Google Now, said that the cards on Android and iOS are basically the same, but there are fewer cards on iOS. These so-called Cards refer to cards that provide different information, such as weather information, traffic conditions, news, etc. It is reported that only 22 of the 29 Android cards have been migrated to iOS.

Unlike the Android version, Google Now on iOS needs to log in to Google's account before using it; The Android version of Google Now can be used as long as it is in the Android 4.1 or above system and is opened directly. In addition, voice recognition, search prediction and other functions are no different.

Google Now's predictive search function is an important chip in the competition with Siri, It can really "give you the answer before you ask"; Siri is completely in the state of "you don't ask and I don't answer" in information feedback. The reason why you can predict what users want is that Google Now will call information from other applications on your phone, such as calendars. It can respond in advance according to your previously arranged schedule, your geographical location, real-time traffic conditions of your location and other information.

Although Google Now is not available in China, the voice search function can be used normally. My biggest feeling after trial is that the accuracy of speech recognition has been greatly improved. Tamar Yehoshua, product manager of Google Now, said that the voice recognition capability of the new version was about 15% to 35% higher than that when the feature was launched last year.

I think the level of speech recognition in the new version has even exceeded Siri: when I search in English with a slight Chinese accent, Google Now has not made any mistakes - no matter words or long sentences. Unfortunately, Chinese is not supported at present.

For users in the United States, with the Google Now function, there is no doubt that Siri has a new choice. Google's ability to capture and analyze information is a specialty, which Siri can only match at present; But Siri is more inclined to build an AI system to realize human-computer dialogue. Therefore, the two products are complementary at their current levels, although both are making up for each other's weak skills.

Google Now is increasingly important in Google's mobile strategy. It undertakes an important task that Google wants to achieve on mobile devices - Personal Assistant; We usually use the personal assistant function to manage and process information. In this regard, Google has unique advantages and accumulation.

After Apple launched Siri, some users chose to use it for mobile search, and only a few words can get intelligent feedback, which undoubtedly threatens Google's search industry on the iOS platform. Therefore, in addition to the complement of product series, the introduction of competing products is also a point.

Due to the strong closeness of the iOS system, applications cannot exchange data directly, nor can they call necessary resources from the bottom of the system. Therefore, the iOS version of Google Now will have a certain degree of discount on the user experience. For example, Google Now on iOS cannot synchronize data in the background as it does on Android; However, Google said that the geographical location information can be synchronized at the system level, so Google Now can directly call the geographical location on iOS.

In addition, the most disappointing thing for users is that Google Now on iOS does not support system push as the Android version does. This means that you need to actively enter the application to view the card, which to some extent, "predictive search" becomes impractical. But Google said it was working on the push issue.

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