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The main thrust of big data is layering different data sources on top of each other to gain new insights. Most often, this means taking your traditional internal data warehouse and layering public data sources like data.gov or social media data (mining it for sentiment analysis, for example) and the combination of the two reveals news insights. In the case of Google Now, it is clearly taking multiple data sources and combining them together in new ways to provide valuable information.

For more on big data, see our joint TechRepublic/ZDNet special feature on the topic:
http://www.zdnet.com/topic-making-the-business-case-for-big-data/