Googles approach to smart stuff is so weird and backwards.
Google Now was truly impressive. It genuinely saved time, and it’s smartness could easily wow people.
Assistant is already a massive step backwards from that, but compared to both Siri and in particular Alexa at least understands you better and can control most smart home stuff.
And now Gemini shows that the only use case Google seems to be aware of is people doing searches via voice input. As if that is what people used Now/Assistant for…
I miss Google Now… just swipe, and all the relevant information is there. No need to prompt it, no need to wait for a response, and no audio noise to get the information I need.
It was perfect for my needs.
About the only thing I still use it for is setting timers and asking it what time it is. It’s useless at everything else.
My Nest just forgets about timers about 20% of the time. This is me, daily.
- “Set a 10 minute timer”
- “OK, 10 minute timer starting now”
- “How much time is left?”
- “It doesn’t look like you have any timers”
Another example of enshittification at play. Google stops maintaining and fixing its tech to force users to migrate to its new and “better” tech.
But the new tech is not better -its half baked and being rushed out because google is in an AI arms race deploying broken technology to keep up with its rivals and to keep its share price up. This is to benefit google and its share holders, not users.
