I thought Google Assistant seemed like it was getting dumber, but I didn’t have concrete proof until yesterday. It would often fail to recognize “OK google” or say it couldn’t do stuff without unlocking the phone. Fine, maybe user error, maybe too loud, etc.
Well yesterday I tried to set a timer, which is the main thing I even use google assistant for at this point. it’s easier and faster to set a timer when I’m baking if I can ask Google Assistant and baking, as you may know, is kind of time sensitive.
In years past, this would open my timer app and everything would be fine from there. Yesterday, however, it opened a timer in the search bar. Then I closed the search bar to look something up (I don’t think I even noticed at this point) and that made the timer stop completely. When I realized what I did I went back to the browser window and the timer was stopped at about 3 seconds in. How long had it been? Well I’d need a timer to tell you.
So that was a fun experience and now I guess I can’t even rely on Google Assistant for something as basic as a timer.
So my only use case for Google Assistant is when sometimes I wake up at around 5-6 AM whereas ideally I should wake up at 7 AM, so in that sleepy state, I just say, “Hey Google! What is the time right now?”, with my eyes closed. And assistant answers that verbally.
Turns out, Gemini can’t do this as seamlessly as Assistant, nor will it speak the time, so can’t use that hands free.
So I reverted back to Google Assistant instead of Gemini as my assistant
Gemini is so neutered is crazy; I asked it to search something on YouTube while I was washing my hands and it can’t even open the YouTube app to do that. It sucks because Gemini is great with Android Auto but awful elsewhere.
Its so off. I just tried it myself for the first time today. And also the last. I asked it to give me direction to the nearest gas station. It suggested one almost 300km from where I live. Just a 3 and a half hour drive. Also I have like 5 gas station within my town.
My favorite thing that Gemini has done was I asked it to play Holy Diver by Dio on Spotify, thinking that was a simple request since Assistant has been able to do that for about a decade now. It said it couldn’t do that, but that if I listen to a classic rock radio station, I might get lucky and they might play it. lol
i second this. make sure you provide feedback through their avenue. hopefully it gets to them. most recent problem for me is to use google assistant to write a note but now it asks which app instead of using google keep automatically like before. google keep is set as the default note app, too
another big issue is the repeat reminders on google calendar. it seems like it has been a problem for years. i simply dont understand why such a power company dont address these things
It’s an absolute train wreck and I’ve actually been thinking about unplugging. YouTube music and the broken podcast feature is just one issue.
I guarantee you GDPR and CCPA made them walk back functionality due to privacy concerns in those laws. That’s the only explanation of how something that seemed to be pretty useful became completely broken but we don’t know why and we sort of feel gas lit into keep trying.
I know this is the case but I keep desperately hoping it will resolve itself but I just think that they had to do backwards functionality. Too many legal things, and now the users are just left here hoping. Like most Google products. I’m not even mad. I get the game.
I use Amazon Alexa for most of those things when I’m home and only use Google on the go with my phone.
One of the few things I actually want to do with Google Assistant is set location based reminders and Google removed that capability, which just seems crazy. Bixby can do it on my Samsung phone, but I’d rather not use multiple assistants on my phone.
I’m hoping Assistant will get better as AI is rolled out and improves.
It really is just absolutely terrible. You literally cannot have it tell you what time it is despite the time being on your phone screen, without mobile data turned on. If you ask it for length of flights it tells you the price over and over instead of actually answering your question… While showing you on screen what The flight time is. It’s like they can’t figure out how to make it actually access and repeat the information that is readily available to it.
