Google Assistant kills off support for third-party note apps

The Google Assistant continues to circle the drain, with yet another feature loss.

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[Deleted member 521511]

Well, the de-prioritization certainly explains why my Google Nest Hub Max and Android Auto assistant requests have given me nowhere close to what I asked them. What a fantastic strategy it is to spin up products only to kill them a few years later when their attention shifts, like a toddler switching favorite toys.

 

[metavirus]

It you don't have a powerful executive taking a look at the wider ecosystem effects of having a good voice assistant…

Should have an “alleged” before “wider ecosystem effects”, because, especially in Google’s case, it’s just executive bullshit.

 

[afidel]

Well, the de-prioritization certainly explains why my Google Nest Hub Max and Android Auto assistant requests have given me nowhere close to what I asked them. What a fantastic strategy it is to spin up products only to kill them a few years later when their attention shifts, like a toddler switching favorite toys.

Android Auto assistant has ALWAYS been braindead for some reason, exit auto and ask normal assistant the exact same freaking question that auto assistant said "I don't understand" to and you'd get back a result or have it perform the action, hands free even. It's one of the reasons I ran Waze for so long, you could run it in the foreground but have regular assistant listening.

 

[deltaproximus]

Honestly I only use Google assistant for two things now anymore, but using the same function.

The first use is when I know my phone is in the same room as me but I don't see it, I just shout "Hey Google, set a timer for 1 second" so I can track it by the ringing. The second is when I'm cooking and need to set a timer.

I used to set reminders all the time with it. I don't remember when that became unreliable but it seems like it always brings up the reminders late now, so I've stopped in favor of adding them to the calendar app manually.

As long as I can still set timers with my voice with whatever eventually replaces the assistant, I probably won't notice a difference. Bard and other LLMs seem like overkill for it though.

 

[MST2.021K]

deleted original knee jerk rant

I suspect this probably doesn't require a lot of resources. The code already works. How about we just leave it in and let people do what they want with it?

 

[Tridus]

Aside from the patent stuff (because a patent on "change the volume of multiple things that are all playing the same music at once" is freaking stupid), I really don't get Google's thinking. As usual. Assistant works, its useful, and its in a lot of places. Cutting it off at the kneecaps makes no sense and just reinforces that you can't rely on Google products.

Is nobody in the company aware of just how their reputation is actually impacting the bottom line at this point?

 

[thrillgore]

I was worried they're gonna cut out Keep support from note taking, that's not the case so i'm surprisingly not impacted by this.

It does hurt looking at yet another god damn Google product facing certain oblivion and its a big reason why I haven't bought a new Pixel phone yet.

 

[Sarty]

Is nobody in the company aware of just how their reputation is actually impacting the bottom line at this point?

Spicy hot take: there a broader tech culture where frequent job-hopping is expected at all levels, and this is commonly cited as one reason for the prodigious innovation we get out of Silicon Valley. However, not really giving a crap about your employer's five-year and ten-year trajectory might be a negative manifestation of that.

 

[Deleted member 853890]

Should have an “alleged” before “wider ecosystem effects”, because, especially in Google’s case, it’s just executive bullshit.

I can't even begin to imagine what the effects would have to be to offset losing $10 billion a year, assuming Google's losses are similar to Amazon's. I'm expecting a lot of kneejerk responses to the article about Google killing a product but...uh, that's a LOT of money to be losing on a product or service without any way to recoup it. And unless you find a way to process voice locally and do it with enough accuracy where users will accept the results, that's not going to change.

Home Assistant might maybe someday be an alternative but it's definitely not yet - it's text only, limited in scope, and it's telling that the best the article can do is a vague "some kind of hardware" to describe what would be needed to make it work with voice.

 

[agt499]

It seems like they continue to go backwards, and somehow Google Now from like 10 years ago (?) still seemed better.

It frustrates me that I can ask Assistant to play "Heathen Child", watch it transcribe that perfectly, then decide that it should correct that to a different title and play something I've never heard and never want to.

On topic, I'm glad they are at least keeping the Keep integration since it is now almost unbroken again.
From memory it still requires your language to be set to US English, otherwise the behaviour won't send things to Keep.

Edit:typo

 

[runswithjedi]

Hey Google, if Google Assistant doesn't work well, I won't use Android.

 

[Deleted member 853890]

deleted original knee jerk rant

I suspect this probably doesn't require a lot of resources. The code already works. How about we just leave it in and let people do what they want with it?

Same reason as usual - either you cut the cord now and get it over with, or leave it in until it eventually, inevitably breaks and get a bunch of anger when that happens.

 

[Sarty]

losing $10 billion a year, assuming Google's losses are similar to Amazon's. I'm expecting a lot of kneejerk responses to the article about Google killing a product but...uh, that's a LOT of money to be losing on a product or service without any way to recoup it

One wonders the process chain that authorized that kind of expenditure in the first place, and how those decision-makers justified their risk assessments and potential paths to profitability!

Oh wait, they're at the company they joined after leaving the company they joined after they left Google, with a nice shiny "worked on $10B project" bullet on their resume.

 

[Fatesrider]

Well, the de-prioritization certainly explains why my Google Nest Hub Max and Android Auto assistant requests have given me nowhere close to what I asked them. What a fantastic strategy it is to spin up products only to kill them a few years later when their attention shifts, like a toddler switching favorite toys.

While it's true it sucks to be a once beloved toy, embracing technological features has always been a "it's going to die sooner or later" thing. Floppies to zip drives to thumb drives, RSA cables to VGA cables to HDMI to whatever is hot now (if not HDMI), reel to reel to cassette, to CD's to streaming, Beta, VHS, to DVD's to Blu-ray (which streaming is now killing).

No technology is persistent or permanent.

Google just abuses the privilege.

That said, I'm gonna bet they come out with an AI solution for it instead and name it something equally stupid and everyone will hate using. That's not an overall tech trend.

Just Google's.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

At this point Google's mission seems to be making Microsoft look good, and they are getting better and better at it.

 

[cesarean escape]

Spicy hot take: there a broader tech culture where frequent job-hopping is expected at all levels, and this is commonly cited as one reason for the prodigious innovation we get out of Silicon Valley. However, not really giving a crap about your employer's five-year and ten-year trajectory might be a negative manifestation of that.

There's a CEO who is supposed to be guiding at the top level, regardless of staff changes. If the main plot is rewritten when employees change out, something is wrong. There are consequences - Android has lost the youth market to Apple.

 

[SeanJW]

Hey Google, if Google Assistant doesn't work well, I won't use Android.

This is Google's dilemma - a voice assistant is now table stakes for a mobile phone OS, since the iPhone 4S and Siri. Apple is in the reverse situation with Maps - it's not an income product itself, but a required value add to another product line. Amazon can blow away the whole Alexa thing and write it off, but Google doesn't have that luxury.

 

[scatterthought]

I mostly use Google Assistant to turn things on and off, so it's really just a UI for my openHAB home-automation system. I also use it for kitchen timers, and sometimes I ask about the weather. That's pretty much it.

I think that's the problem. Google envisioned people using it as another form of "search". However, while voice is fast for asking questions, it's not efficient for receiving answers--particularly when the initial search leads to more questions. So when I search, I just pull up Google on a PC/phone/tablet. Not as quick, but more productive in the long run. Language-model AIs show far more promise in this regard.

The reality is that voice assistants haven't turned out how Amazon/Apple/Google envisioned, and at some point you have to move on. If a lot of people are like me and aren't actually searching with Google Assistant, then I really don't see why they'd keep pouring money into developing it.

Saying that, I think Google should try to minimize the damage to consumers. Commit to maintaining the current level of functionality for a few years, and look for a way to offload the most heavily used features to local devices to reduce reliance on cloud services. Easier said than done, though.

 

[Velvet G]

I'm at the point that I just use my nest hub to set alarms, timers, check calendars and turn smart home items on and off. The responses have become more useless over the years, things it used to be able to answer it no longer can, returning an I don't know but hey I have this website, kind of defeating the purpose of me asking.. I can look it up on my phone.

I use it for the basics and half of the time, it doesn't get those right. I tried Alexa and while it had some nice features like whisper mode, I absolutely HATED that everything was a sales pitch and a "try this command".

I just need you to be a clock most of the time and answer questions. I'm not trying to buy something every time I interact with you.

 

[Alaska Jack]

Honestly I only use Google assistant for two things now anymore, but using the same function.

The first use is when I know my phone is in the same room as me but I don't see it, I just shout "Hey Google, set a timer for 1 second" so I can track it by the ringing.

Interesting. I say "Hey Google, set volume to maximum," followed by, "Hey Google, what time is it?"

 

[stormcrash]

It's astounding how Google will just rot/wase and throw out such a huge investment. Then again they did this to Google Now first in favor of assistant (remember the keyword was OK Google, until assistant changed that to be more natural feeling like Hey Siri and "Alexa")

Sadly for Google I don't think Bard or their AI will be the accepted replacement for Assistant they think it will in the way that Assistant replaced Now (and killed the actually novel Now card view)

 

[Alaska Jack]

I use it a lot. I can be cooking and just say, "Hey Google, add milk to my shopping list."

Here's a neat one. I was driving the other day and said "Hey Google, search wikipedia for 'Bette Davis eyes." it went directly to the article. Then I said, "Hey Google, read it to me," and it did. Thought that was cool.

 

[Sarty]

At this point Google's mission seems to be making Microsoft look good, and they are getting better and better at it.

Sometimes I wonder if just being geographically more isolated from many of its tech brethren kept Microsoft a little more focused on the medium-term, because its employees had a longer average tenure.

Unfortunately I doubt there's much public data on that.

 

[bipppi]

Family Bell set-up with the assistant app on my phone absolutely saved my life in getting the kids ready for school.

I also like using it as my cheap whole-house speaker setup.

But talking to it is less useful than talking to the dog. Really. When the dog doesn't understand me, I don't get a thesis defense on how I can use the app or an instructional tutorial. ...and it doesn't understand me most of the time anymore (the google nest devices. --- the dog and I know eachother.)

I hate to suggest this, but I'd pay 2-3 bucks a month for a google assistant that was actually good.

 

[buback]

There's a CEO who is supposed to be guiding at the top level, regardless of staff changes. If the main plot is rewritten when employees change out, something is wrong. There are consequences - Android has lost the youth market to Apple.

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that the problem with Alphabet is Sundar Pichai. Maybe he's making all the right moves to please the shareholders short-term but he's destroying the company's image.

 

[Deleted member 853890]

One wonders the process chain that authorized that kind of expenditure in the first place, and how those decision-makers justified their risk assessments and potential paths to profitability!

Oh wait, they're at the company they joined after leaving the company they joined after they left Google, with a nice shiny "worked on $10B project" bullet on their resume.

I think it's pretty simple in this case - figure out the tech first so you know you can do it, and then worry about how to monetize it later. Except, like Google and Amazon are realizing, there really isn't a path to monetize it.

 

[krimhorn]

Sometimes I wonder if just being geographically more isolated from many of its tech brethren kept Microsoft a little more focused on the medium-term, because its employees had a longer average tenure.

Unfortunately I doubt there's much public data on that.

A heavy business focus did that. They couldn't drop a product (no matter how much they should have) without losing multi million dollar per year clients. So they helped new features on top of old busted ones. It wasn't a good thing then but the constant pivoting and letting moderate successes die in favor of something less than half baked as a replacement isn't either.

 

[ChefSalad]

I've never understood why the voice recognition functionality had to be cloud-based. I remember PCs being able to do it reasonably well back in the nineties. Surely a current phone processor should be able to do it ten times better now, so why isn't that processing done locally? Doing it locally would save Google a mint, and then these features they're cutting would be practically free. Is it just that Google wants recordings of the crap we say that bad?

 

[Deleted member 46272]

I use Google Assistant (GA) a lot when I'm driving around for work, especially to make phone calls. I have about 300 people in my phone's contacts (mostly work-related), and over the last year or so GA's ability to understand names has degraded to the point where it's almost useless. I used to have no problem saying, "Hey Google - Call John Smithson" and it would understand that 98% of the time. Today, it's much more likely to respond with "I don't understand" or, arguably worse, decide to randomly call someone else with a totally different name. Google dictation has also become really unreliable if you need to say more than a single simple sentence. That also used to work great until the last year or so, and today it's almost useless.

It's one more big strike against Android as a platform, which ultimately undermines Google's marketshare. Not every component of an ecosystem needs to be a revenue generator if it makes the whole platform better, and I think that's the difference in approach between Apple and Google. I think this changed when Sundar Pichai took over and he's systematically destroying Google as a "platform".

He's either a moron with no capability to plan a long term strategy, or (actually more likely) he wants to juice up the stock price to hit targets that would net him some fat bonuses but he really doesn't care about the long-term health of the company.

 

[RiptideLA]

Is nobody in the company aware of just how their reputation is actually impacting the bottom line at this point?

I have no idea who in the company would be aware of this.

But I would guess it is the person who tracks the rate at which consumers are switching from Android to iOS. In the US at least, it seems to be increasing.

Edit:

I poked around a little. Found that for people who can state a reason they switch to iOS from Android, just over half say:

Prior phone problems: their old phone did not serve them, because it was aging, needed repair, or had some deficiency that affected their user experience.

Also, apparently the rate of switching to iOS has accelerated the last few quarters in the US.

https://cirpapple.substack.com/p/why-android-owners-switch-to-iphone

 

[Digital Dud]

I've never understood why the voice recognition functionality had to be cloud-based. I remember PCs being able to do it reasonably well back in the nineties. Surely a current phone processor should be able to do it ten times better now, so why isn't that processing done locally? Doing it locally would save Google a mint, and then these features they're cutting would be practically free. Is it just that Google wants recordings of the crap we say that bad?

Full speech recognition models take up a few gigs and have to be loaded into memory. Siri has an offline recognition model on iPhone but it's not the full model.

 

[Hapticz]

a little bit here, a little bit there..... soon we may all experience a 'New Google Feature", known from prior acts of user abuse (remove support or product at end user loss and cost outlay).

offering up new stuff with "Wow, come try this out folks!" and getting people actually used to something (habitual idiots) and then yanking it away may be the peak of corporate arrogance.

something is going on, we are never to be informed of, so everyone should just chill and ........

 

[deltaproximus]

Interesting. I say "Hey Google, set volume to maximum," followed by, "Hey Google, what time is it?"

I really wish I could just ask "Where are you?" and have it respond "over here! To your left! No, your other left!" But it just brings up some Google search instead.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

Sometimes I wonder if just being geographically more isolated from many of its tech brethren kept Microsoft a little more focused on the medium-term, because its employees had a longer average tenure.

I think it's a difference in culture.

Microsoft more often than Google realizes that something is important, and that it will need relentless iteration to get gud. I know, not always, Zune, Groove, Windows Mobile, etc. etc. etc., but look at Azure, or Bing.

If you would have told me 20 years ago that Microsoft would be better than the competition at interoperability, let alone flat-out open-source their core runtimes, my head would have exploded.

 

[TheNetAvenger]

^This Stuff... Google is possibly the crappiest company in a sea of crap companies.

So why is 'this' important?

Google spent more money killing off Windows Phone/Mobile and Cortana than they ever spent on Google Assistant (-Insert other Name variations)

Google spent a lot of time and money to keep technologies from consumers, and then stopped developing technologies to replace the ones they killed.

And what did they give consumers and the industry? Nothing, they didn't even pretend.

Here we are at another turning point in technology, and Google is so determined to catch up to ChatGPT - they are literally scaring the crap out of the people behind OpenAI and ChatGPT.

Maybe if Microsoft and ChatGPT would play dead for six months, then Google might stop before they create SkyNet.


Google is just disgusting. They are pukes, bags of puke.

PS Seriously, they were willing to work harder and put more money into harming Windows Consumers, than they are willing to put into their own products.

Maybe if they made better products, they could just do that.
Ah, that is a foolish thought, Google didn't become Google by making good products.

 

[Zu Nim]

This started for me last week. I said, "Hey Google, turn on the kitchen." (In my house, I only have lights in the kitchen so I don't need to add "lights".) But I have two homes in my Home app (elderly parents) and it turned on everything in my parents' kitchen as well. Having two homes with the same room name hasn't been a problem until now. I'm going to have to remove my parents from my Home app if Assistant no longer recognizes what home it's in. Google has been on a mission to eliminate me as a customer.

 

[Golgo1]

In fairness, the note taking was pretty shyt this whole time.
It COULD have been the game-changing feature, but they shat the bed on it

 

[Golgo1]

I've never understood why the voice recognition functionality had to be cloud-based. I remember PCs being able to do it reasonably well back in the nineties. Surely a current phone processor should be able to do it ten times better now, so why isn't that processing done locally? Doing it locally would save Google a mint, and then these features they're cutting would be practically free. Is it just that Google wants recordings of the crap we say that bad?

A reminder seems to be needed on most VA threads..

Voice recognition is not Speech recognition