Google Now for the web: Google testing a much more data-heavy home page

<i>&#62; It has also conveniently been scheduled for “retirement.” In an announcement dated April 8, just a couple of weeks ago, Google said it will retire iGoogle on November 1, 2013. The reason? A Google Now-like experience on mobile.</i><p>Take off your conspiracy hat. The iGoogle shutdown wasn't announced "just a couple of weeks ago"; it was announced last July:<p><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-cleaning-in-summer.html" rel="nofollow">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-cleaning-in-su...</a>

(Obligatory "as a former Google fan" header)<p>When Google isn't making my skin crawl / fists clench in fury lately, they are making me scratch my head.<p>Why on earth isn't Google Now, easily one of the most amazing things they've done recently and hugely competitive give how much big-data crunching and user profiling it requires, available as a widget on Android? Why is there no Now api that other apps can push cards to?<p>Why is there no Google Now launcher?<p>Now still feels like some interesting parallel world on Android (while Google+ feels like some uninteresting parallel world everywhere else).

Why does google now tell me how long it will take to get home when I'm on my way to work? Is it just messing with me?

Meanwhile I can't see it at all on my Android 2.3 device, even though I have had voice search on there for years, all the clever stuff seems to be taking place server-side, and I already get push notifications for calendar etc..

Wow, I expected to see Google Now integrated within Chrome somehow, but betting for the homepage is even bigger.