I’ve decided to use Google Now exclusively for a long list of tasks. I’m calling it the Google Now Diet.

Here’s why I’m doing it. New technology is great. Trouble is, we’re all stuck with habits formed by old technology.

For example, when you want to search, what do you do? I habitually type in a search in the URL address bar or go to Google.com.

When I want to give myself a reminder, I tend to open the Gmail app on my phone and send myself an email.

And when I want to play a YouTube video, I thumb through the apps, find the YouTube app, open it, tap on the search field and type in the name of the video or song I’m looking for.

I know that Google Now does all this stuff easier, faster and better. Yet my habits were formed in olden days before Now existed. So I forget to use Google Now.

The good news is that there’s a way to break old habits and form new ones. And that is the diet concept — limit yourself only to the new way of doing things.

And that’s why I’m going on the Google Now diet.

There’s a lobbying and PR firm that exists solely to oppose Google. It’s made up of companies that compete directly with Google.

Their latest effort involves the filing of an antitrust complaint with European authorities over Android.

Here’s why the complaint fails the tests of both truth and intelligence.

Misleading and misunderstanding blogging and reporting this week is leading everybody into falsely believing that Intel plans to ship or support Android-based laptops.

This has sparked debate over the wisdom or folly of Android laptops.

I’ll make a case for why Android laptops are a great idea, but first let’s kill the myth that Intel announced Android laptops.

We learned a lot about Google Glass this week. In doing so, we also learned a lot about Google.

It’s tempting to look at Google’s vast range of products and research projects and conclude that the company has more ideas than vision. (The difference is that ideas tend to be disconnected, whereas vision involves a coherent strategic direction.)

Where is Google going? Does Google even know?

A closer look suggests that Google is, in fact, an increasingly visionary company. And the fate of many Google projects is predictable.

Some are predestined to die eventually in the hellfire of “spring cleaning” (Orkut), many will live on forever as useful, profitable but not centrally strategic products (Gmail) and others form the strategic centerpiece of Google’s longterm future (Google+).

If we’ve learned anything from the truckload of Google Glass details this week, and from prior revelations that I’ll tell you about, Google Now is absolutely strategic and central to the future of Google.

More interestingly, Google Now’s cards metaphor looks likely to become one of the main interfaces for interacting with Google’s many cloud services.

Messaging standards are great! Maybe that’s why we have so many of them.

Don’t look now, but people communicate via the Internet. Whichever company can get the majority of users on their system wins. To quote Newman, the Seinfeld mailman: “When you control the mail, you control… information!”

The reason is that communication is where most of the online eyeballs are. And the network effect factor is overwhelming. (Network effect is: more users make a network more valuable to users, and users want to use networks that are more valuable.)

The carriers want everybody texting. It costs next to nothing to deliver text messages, but carriers can charge a lot and, for some reason, people pay. It’s free money, as far as the carriers are concerned.

Thousands of app makers want you to give up SMS and embrace some app-based communications system. Some work like texting. Others like an intercom system. Many of them are really great, but they’ve got an uphill battle getting everyone to embrace them.

Apple wants to get all OS X and iOS users messaging via iMessage.

Facebook wants to leverage Google’s Android to get everyone embracing Facebook Home.

And Google’s hatching a killer service based on Google+ called Babel. Allegedly.