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Changes we're making to Google Assistant

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Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#91
post #68

I was watching a friend use Siri the other day (I've never used an iPhone) and I was blown away by how much it could accomplish in comparison to Google Assistant. He said he used Siri as the default way of interfacing with his phone, which I found interesting. Reading this list of removals, especially the removal of CALLER ID, on video calls no less, an insane choice - how much could that possibily cost to maintain?…

that's strange. I remember watching mkbhd assistant comparison and I thought google had the more capable one

Yeah, it's no competition. Siri is terrible in comparison to google assistant. Not sure what OP is on about.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#92
post #88
post #87

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymor…

The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.

It’s almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an email was so amazing.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#93

I was watching a friend use Siri the other day (I've never used an iPhone) and I was blown away by how much it could accomplish in comparison to Google Assistant. He said he used Siri as the default way of interfacing with his phone, which I found interesting. Reading this list of removals, especially the removal of CALLER ID, on video calls no less, an insane choice - how much could that possibily cost to maintain?…

Siri must not like me, she never does what I want.

"Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me)

"Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me)

"Hey Siri, I'm going to buy an Android" (turns off alarm, refuses to elaborate)

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#94
post #92
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.

It’s almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an email was so amazing.

I miss Inbox too, but Gmail now has snooze functionality built in.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#95
post #30

To me this highlights the core failure with all these voice-driven UIs: you have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. Discoverability is zero, which makes big changes like this even more disruptive. I've already decided that I'm done with Google's smart assistant stuff in any case. I have a Google Home with a screen in my kitchen and the most-used feature (aside from just existing as a photo frame) was…

On top of what you mentioned in your first sentence, any ideas to improve discoverability are horrible. I hate it when Alexa does not play my podcast right away but explains to me how I can change episodes. I despise Alexa for telling me that I have some notification before starting my timer. And so on - any voice only attempt to explain me something without me asking for it means adding a lot of friction between me…

> Alexa for telling me that I have some notification before starting my timer

  Device > Settings > Sounds > Notification > none
"Do Not Disturb" will suppress notifications without affecting alarms and timers.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#96
post #93

I was watching a friend use Siri the other day (I've never used an iPhone) and I was blown away by how much it could accomplish in comparison to Google Assistant. He said he used Siri as the default way of interfacing with his phone, which I found interesting. Reading this list of removals, especially the removal of CALLER ID, on video calls no less, an insane choice - how much could that possibily cost to maintain?…

Siri must not like me, she never does what I want. "Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me) "Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me) "Hey Siri, I'm going to buy an Android" (turns off alarm, refuses to elaborate)

My favorite problem is "Hey Siri, navigate home" proceeds to open navigation and send me to a place that isn't my home. I can up open maps manually and click on "home" and it works totally fine, but for some reason, Siri finds a place called "home" that isn't actually my home to send me to.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#97
I've had a Google Home for close to ten years and I don't think I've ever used a single one of these features.

Then again, 99% of my Assistant use is kitchen timers and Spotify, and I systematically disable it on my phones. My kids are still salty about Song Quiz going away last year though.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#99
post #88
post #87

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymor…

The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.

It was fantastic. It's worth noting that Pixel's At a Glance does still tell you when to leave (and you get a notification), but as far as I can tell, the parking features are completely gone.

That being said, I no longer have any clue what features exist in Google's ecosystem because their A/B and feature flag rollout system is so fundamentally broken and misused by the product teams that some features literally never arrive for some users until they factory reset their devices, and suddenly they get a fresh set of feature flags. I am still waiting on just about all of the new RCS features Google announced months ago, and just yesterday I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why my partner's devices never received cross device timers while all of my devices do. That feature was launched in May of last year. My partner does a lot of the cooking, and our kitchen Nest Hub usually handles the timers. But only my phone and tablet receive it's timer status...

I say misused above, because it strongly appears that they announce features before completion and then use an extremely shallow rollout to finish the features with the cover of "finding bugs". Is it actually released if the only Google accounts that receive the flags are the dev and product team members?

Google, you've perverted a fantastic engineering practice into a broken mess that reduces your user's confidence in your product and breeds confusion that hurts your brand.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#100
https://www.semafor.com/article/01/10/2024/google-lays-off-h...

Note that there has been a significant layoff days ago in the assistant team to "improve Google Assistant as it explores integrating newer artificial intelligence technology into its products". Probably they're trying to replace the backend for the assistant with some LMM-based models and see those functionalities are the blockers? Of course, this could be (and should be IMO) done in more gradual migrations rather than this sudden deprecation, but who knows what those execs have in their mind.

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