Google Now — the pride and joy of Android Jelly Bean 4.1, first made available on the Galaxy Nexus — will be making its cross-platform debut soon. A Google-produced video leaked on Wednesday apparently shows what Google Now would look like running on an iPhone or iPad.
It hasn't been confirmed that the video is authentic, but the video was promptly pulled from YouTube, giving it added credence.
Engadget managed to save a copy, and upon viewing, it seems inconceivable that the video could be a fake. The narration, animation and background hipster music are all trademark Google. Sergey Brin himself may as well have recorded the voiceover.
In addition to the leaked video, a recent developers' build of Chromium included a Chrome flag. This indicates that Google is probably gearing up for a Chrome-browser release of Google Now, which would enable the feature to run both on Chromebooks as well as Windows Phone 8.
The release of Google Now for iOS would be a novel development in the dynamic between Google and Apple. The Cupertino firm has already released its own analog to the feature — a voice-activated and sometimes sassy virtual assistant named Siri.
Apple acquired an entire company to bring the feature to iOS. Although it's hard to say how a Google Now release on iOS would affect the popularity of Siri — already less than stellar — there is definitely no reason to use both Siri and Google Now. It's either, or.
The whole thing seems like a risky proposition for Apple. Google Now, compared to Siri, is arguably better implemented, more smartly laid out and simply more robust. Apple's best bet for competing against it is not to. It will be interesting to see what happens when Google's iOS version makes its way to Cupertino for the app approval process.
