It laid out a course for making apps obsolete and getting users back onto the web, where Google is master.

Huh. Cultural hegemony through digital circus.

but also interesting things like when are they busy, when are they open, and what are you likely to need when you’re there.

Facebook made the same claims about its ads.

It goes beyond pure information, too; you can play Pandora stations in Google Now, or order groceries from Instacart.

Wrapping wrappers with wrapper wrappers.

The marquee new Google Now feature is Now on Tap, which allows developers to integrate the service’s contextual brilliance into their own offerings.

I can't even get my partner to call me brilliant. I am a live, living, human that is the only one that can find the recycling bin in this household. I do it even without using Google!

These reads like Google is making a play for web-middle-ware whose main reason to exist is to insert itself into everyone's TCP/IP stack for demographic logging.