Last June, Google announced it was removing third-party Assistant voice apps and Nest Hub games in a year’s time. With that set to occur on June 20, another casualty of that deprecation is the shutdown of third-party Google Assistant Notes & Lists integration.
In Google Assistant settings, you’ve long had the ability to set a Notes & Lists provider for voice commands that let you create or edit a list/note on speakers and Smart Displays. The options are Google Keep, Any.do, AnyList, and Bring Shopping Lists.
That integration is now going away. The developers of AnyList announced today that “Google is shutting down the Google Assistant Notes & Lists integration for non-Google apps on June 20, 2023.”
Specifically, “it will no longer be possible to use Google Assistant to add items to AnyList.”
The Notes & Lists integration is built on the same Conversational Actions/“Actions on Google” platform that’s set to go away next month.
Conversational Actions were the first way for third-party developers to integrate with Google Assistant. However, third-party voice experiences, which include apps and games with visual interactions on Smart Displays or speakers, are no longer a company priority.
Top comment by Matthew Harris
I guess I deserve it with their extensive Google graveyard but I'm so angry with them for just giving up on voice. I spent hundreds of pounds on speakers and displays to spread them through the house and they have just squandered what they could be.
People were never going to buy stuff directly through them but surely this should have been about keeping people in the Google ecosystem. Wish I had spent my money on amazon who at least still release new products for their voice ui.
And with the recent ai improvements it could have been another forefront for bard. But instead they are just moving the staff away from Google assistant and over to bard with no plans to integrate them.
Rather, Google is now focusing on just having Android developers add voice command capabilities to their existing apps. This extends to phones, tablets, Wear OS, Google/Android TV, and Android Auto/Automotive. The developers allude to this as well: “We are continuing to communicate with Google and hope to be able to support Google Assistant on Android devices again in the future, but we don’t have anything to announce at this time.”
The old approach of making an entirely independent voice experience was harder and part of the early days of smart assistant experimentation.
We’ve asked the company whether Google Keep will be impacted by the June 20 deadline or if the upcoming Google Tasks integration, which is not yet widely rolled out, is the only service you can use with Assistant moving forward.
Update: The company tells us that Google Keep will not be impacted by this change.
More on Google Assistant:
- Google warning Nest Hub owners that Assistant games are going away soon
- Google ends updates and effectively kills 3rd-party Assistant Smart Displays
- The TicWatch Pro 5 doesn’t have Google Assistant, as Wear OS keeps holding it back
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