Google Assistant continues to crumble in the ‘Gemini era’

Ben Schoon | Jun 2 2024 - 9:00 am PT

As Google pivots to a heavier and heavier focus on Gemini, the experience of using Google Assistant just continues to degrade.

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Back in 2016, Google Assistant was a huge deal. The voice assistant promised to bring the power of Google Search to smart speakers and your phone’s assistant, and it was impressive. At the time, Assistant was doing things that were legitimately compelling and new. And, even down to today, many of those features are still incredibly useful.

But, over time, Google Assistant has felt as though it’s actively degrading.

This isn’t anything new. Users have been feeling this way over the past year or two, but it continues to happen as Google’s “Gemini era” progresses. The focus has just clearly shifted, as signaled by the fact hat Google is pushing users on Android to use Gemini as their voice assistant instead of Assistant, despite there being a considerable feature gap.

There are two things that brought this to mind for me this week. Firstly, Google TV.

This week Amazon announced that it would use AI to upgrade voice search on Fire TV. The company touts that, using an LLM, it can respond to questions such as [insert sandlot]. That stood out to me not because it’s some clever new use of AI, but because Google Assistant has been doing that for years. Not only does it function the same way today, but Google showed off similar examples way back in 2017. But, fast forward to today, and Google’s results aren’t what they once were. In testing Amazon’s examples, Google Assistant on my Chromecast wasn’t very consistent. Some queries resulted in a distinct answer, while others were handed off to Search snippets or YouTube.

The other example that sprung to mind was that of Assistant on the Nest Hub, and how that experience continues to be wildly inconsistent. Google removed a bunch of features from this device and other smart speakers recently, which, in my book, is fine, but more frustratingly, continues to let the remaining features rot.

For several years now, I’ve ended my night with “Hey Google, goodnight,” to set off a routine of locking up my house, having Assistant set my alarm, turning off lights and devices, and playing some music to help me get to sleep. And one by one, those functions are just breaking.

A few months ago I removed the alarm function from that routine because almost every night it’d ask for the alarm time, I’d say it, and the alarm simply wouldn’t set. It failed almost every time. Device controls have also felt increasingly less consistent, and I often find myself getting up in the morning with a light that never turned off for whatever reason. And, most recently, the sleep timer for my music has just stopped working. Where the routine has long stopped Spotify after an hour as set, lately it’s just been letting it go all night for no apparent reason.

And I’m far from alone. It seems you can’t even visit the r/GoogleHome subreddit these days without finding a plethora of posts from frustrated users who are running into functions not working properly despite having been used for years. Here are just a few examples from the past few weeks.

The question then becomes, what’s next?

The obvious answer is Gemini. It’s abundantly clear that Google’s focus as a company is to press on with AI-powered products, and Gemini will very clearly set the foundation for the future of the company’s assistant product.

Is that a good thing? Honestly, it’s hard to say.

Gemini is clearly more capable at pulling together information than Assistant, but it’s also prone to making mistakes and is rarely as concise as Assistant is. Gemini also doesn’t focus on the same things that Assistant does today, as noted by the many functions that Gemini on Android just hands off to Assistant anyway. As our Kyle Bradshaw recently brought out, Gemini in its current state probably isn’t ready for Nest devices such as smart speakers and displays. Kyle explains a best-case scenario that I agree with – a combination of Gemini and Assistant.

But what if we could meet somewhere in the middle? On phones, if you ask Gemini for something that Google Assistant should handle instead, that handoff happens automatically. What if the new Nest Audio and Nest Hub Max – which absolutely need to be rooted in Assistant’s task-oriented nature – could seamlessly hand off questions to Gemini?

For example, if I say, “Hey Google, play rain sounds,” the usual Assistant can handle that without the use of AI. But if I ask something complex – “Hey Google, what are some fun things to do inside on a rainy day?” – the Assistant could pass the question along to Gemini for a more detailed response.

But, with the current state of Google’s projects, it’s hard to say whether or not that will actually happen. The company is caught up in an AI arms race, and it’s led to problems such as this week’s major and viral mistakes with AI Overviews. I miss the days when Google Assistant was great, and it’s frustrating as a user to continue to watch the product crumble in front of me. I just hope Google can pick up the pieces.

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As our Abner Li explained, the Ace might be Google’s most complete vision for a product in years, and it’s rather compelling.

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