I am shocked…shocked! that Google would let a product die on the vine and cease supporting it. Google assistant is dead, long live Gemini assistant!
Its about generating investor buzzwords and killing off beloved apps every 3-6 months.
I Still get their apps confused because of the stupid icon updates…or maybe I stupid and can’t learn new things.
Their new icons are so dumb. I think they thought people would get used to them but no, they’re still bad after several years.
It does take me several seconds to realize which one is which, so I sometimes go by their arrangement on my home screen. Avant-garde design, I guess.
Don’t put extra internet connected microphones in your house.
I just ditched my nest camera after 6ish years. Fuck the spys
I work for an un-named company that makes stuff that has google assistant on them. Initially we put hardware mutes and piped the microphones to physical hardware that monitored for wake up words locally and would then start piping the microphone data to the mother ship once it was heard. Google told us to stop that, only way to certify the product as compatible with Google Assistant was to pipe the raw microphone data to the mother ship 24/7. That was 5 years ago and I removed all devices from my house.
I s2g i will set my house on fire before i allow a unmodded google device in it
So Google half baked a product, pushed it to the public whether they wanted it or not, and now it’s giving up on it replacing it with another half baked product nobody asked for…
Seems par for the course for Google
George Orwell was wrong. We didn’t need the government to bug our houses, we did it ourselves. 🤦♂️
If they kill Home. I’m done with Google products. I’m heavily integrated into nest and Google home. If they kill it further. I’m out.
You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren’t going to break due to software downgrades, those don’t require Gemini or internet connections.
And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it’s pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.
Lights are one of the areas where I think automation is genuinely useful, but my rule with anything “Smart” is that it has to be able to run 100% locally.
It also needs to fail gracefully. A smart switch needs to fail to a dumb switch, not “no switch”.
You’re absolutely correct. I have few smart switches around the house and automations for yard lights and stuff like that are pretty nice to have but I still have the physical switch where the dumb switch was to interact with if the automations are down or I just want to override them. The ones I use even accept the same faceplate than traditional ones so there’s no change on anything unless you want to automate things.
My rule for home automation is that it has to work in a low-tech way. I get Zigbee switches for certain things, but they work as just a light switch if everything is down. This is not true of Phillips Hue bulbs.
My hue bulbs work like normal ass light bulbs if the internet is out. They just default back to standard white bulbs if turned on.
Not sure what your on about.
These just dont need to be online. 90% of the use I have seen is timers and lights, like a half step above hello world.
There is a market for voice assistants that are local.
I have three lights that were wired to one switch. With smart bulbs, I can individually turn them on and off or dim them. No “dumb” solution exists for homes that were wired in a stupid way. This isn’t a niche application, it’s a common reality.
You can get socket extensions where the bulb goes into it and then each extension is connected to a wall mount remote switch. No wifi needed and then you have a wall switch for each bulb.
Doesn’t fit into every light fixture though depends on the design.
Edit:
Long time google assistant user, but them putting Gemini in it is what I’m afraid of, not the solution.
This is yet another “google released a product, didn’t know what to do with it, and made zero updates over the last decade, so now they’re killing it.” I don’t think they’ve ever fixed the bugs that existed the first day I bought mine. The speaker is handy for casting to, but also cast is a shitty non-open protocol.
Kinda just agree with the “everything in this space sucks” unfortunately.
I assume this is going to arrive at the solution of “Upgrade to Gemini-supported devices today!” Yeah, no thanks. I wish I could get Home Assistant working with my nest minis.
I don’t use Google assistant to control any other devices but the amount of stuff I ask 'hey Google’s to do over the last few years has gotten worse than when it first started. More often now I just play music to it via Bluetooth connection.
It’s also how randomly terrible it will be. There are days it couldn’t set timers only to work the next day. Or worse telling it stop timer would stop what was playing on a completely different device.
