Siri, Cortana, Droid knockoff?

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Does anyone actually use these programs?

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Yes.

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I find that I only use Siri thus far for things like

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Siri is much faster at certain things. I can say "Set a reminder for 9 AM tomorrow to do X" much faster than I can go to the reminder app, type it in and go multiple screens down to set the reminder time. Asking Siri "When is sunset" to see if I have enough time to do an outdoor project is much faster than doing a web search or going to weather app.

It's also great for hands free while driving, reading you incoming texts, replying to them, etc.

This technology still has maturing to do. It needs to be constantly listening for activation in a way that doesn't drain battery (the new "Hey Siri" feature only works when plugged in), but once we get to that point you should be able to do all kinds of things. "Hey Siri, connect to speaker and play dance mix" "Hey Siri, turn down the air conditioning" "Hey Siri, repeat last Papa Johns order."

Ok Google performs great for me.

I used Siri heavily for reminders and such. Now that I have a Nexus, I use the shite out of Google Now. It is superior to Siri in pretty much every way. I don't use it to read e-mails to me or send texts, but reminders are a lifeline for me. Location-based reminders are the tits. Also good for opening apps that I don't use a lot and don't necessarily want to clutter my home screen with.

I didn't realize Siri had location-based reminders now. I was using an older version of iOS to keep my jailbreak. For the other stuff like reminders and opening apps, I wasn't saying Google is better at it, but rather responding to the question "does anyone use virtual assistants."

Mainly, Google's voice recognition works way better for me. It's "smarter" in that it gets the gist of what I'm saying and autocorrects much more intelligently. I can talk to it like a person. With Siri, I had to speak more slowly, deliberately enunciating each word so that it didn't interpret a word differently, because it would not auto-correct. Also, since Google now is essentially Google search, any question I ask will be met with a verbal response out loud (like Siri), or if an instant answer is not available, you get an instant page of Google results (unlike Siri, who will ask if I want to search the web). Siri's results for a question also disappear if your phone locks from being idle or if you lock it yourself, whereas Google Now is more integrated and is essentially ready to go at all times.

Google seems to provide more information up front as well. For example, I just turned on my 4S (running latest iOS 7 now, not 8) and tested Siri with a simple question: "How tall is the empire state building?"

Siri responded promptly with "The empire state building is 1,454 feet tall" and showed me a paragraph from Wikipedia.

Google Now responded with "1,250' (381 m), 1,454' (443 m) to tip." It also shows me the heights of other tall buildings people have searched for right underneath it.

I can then say, "OK Google, when was it built?" It responds, "Construction for the empire state building started in 1929."

Siri just searches the web for "when was it built?"

That's just extra nice-to-haves, though. A lot of it depends on preference in the way your question gets answered. For example, if I ask Google where the nearest gas station is, it gives me a list of half a dozen gas stations that are under 4 miles from me and orders them by time to get there rather than distance based on traffic data.

Siri will tell me the gas station that's physically closest to me, and no other options. One could argue that Siri answered the question the most cleanly and concisely, whereas I prefer thorough answers, even if all I really wanted to know was the location of the physically closest gas station.

The most important, objectively better aspect of Google Now is voice recognition for me, but your mileage may vary. Sometimes I mumble, but Google doesn't miss a beat.

I use Siri to ask her the score of games. That's about it