Comment by transcriptase
2 years ago
In addition, products that seem like magic at launch get worse over time instead of better.
I used to do all kinds of really cool routines and home control tasks with Google home, and it could hear and interpret my voice at a mumble. I used it as an alarm clock, to do list, calendar, grocery list, lighting control, give me weather updates, set times etc. It just worked.
Now I have to yell unnaturally loud for it to even wake, and even then the simplest commands have a 20% chance of throwing “Sorry I don’t understand” or playing random music. Despite having a device in every room it has lost the ability to detect proximity and will set timers or control devices across the house. I don’t trust it enough anymore for timers and alarms, since it will often confirm what I asked then simply… not do it.
Ask it to set a 10 minute timer.
It says ok setting a timer for 10 minutes.
3 mins later ask it how long is remaining on the timer. A couple years ago it would say “7 minutes”.
Now there’s a good chance it says I have no timers running.
It’s pathetic, and I would love any insight on the decay. (And yes they’re clean, the mics are as unobstructed as they were out of the box)
Yes, we burned the biscuits when my sister-in-law was visiting over Thanksgiving because she used the Google assistant to set an alarm and the alarm did not go off. Timers no longer work and there's no indication that this is the case.
Google Home perplexes me. I have several of them around the house and they were perfectly fine for years, but someone in the last couple of years they are markedly worse. I would be happy if they just rolled back to 4 years ago and never touch it again. Now, I just wonder how much worse it will get before I give up on the whole ecosystem.
The TPUs that were used for speech on Google Home got repurposed to Google's AI initiatives
Not just the TPUs, also the people.
Same experience with Google Assistant on Android. I used to be able to use it to create calendar events in one shot. A few years ago it started insisting on creating events in steps, which always failed miserably.
FWIW, Amazon's Echo devices still seem to work just fine if you need a voice-controlled timer in your kitchen.