- In a test involving thousands of queries on various subjects, Stone Temple Consulting found Google Now (NASDAQ:GOOG) managed to "completely answer" a question 88% of the time, a rate well above the 53% posted by Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri and the 40% delivered by Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Cortana.
- In addition, Now showed "enhanced results" (results featuring some kind of knowledge box/panel or structured data) 58% of the time; Siri did so 29% of the time, and Cortana 20%.
- Stone Temple was also impressed with Now's ability to return complementary data and detailed results: A query of "Burj Khalifa height" returned (in addition to the skyscraper's height) the heights of various other buildings, and a query of "becoming a firefighter" returned step-by-step instructions from FireScience.org.
- Now, which comes built into Google's version of Android and is available on iOS through the (well-downloaded) Google search app, both strengthens Google's mobile search position, and (to the extent the search app is used instead of Mobile Safari on iOS) lowers the company's search traffic acquisition payments to Apple.
- It also could be a key differentiator for Google in the realm of wearables, where time and location-sensitive push notifications are viewed as a killer app. The recently-launched Android Wear platform features tight Google Now integration.