Google Removes 'Underutilized' Assistant Features To Focus on 'Quality and Reliability'

Google has announced that it will eliminate at least 17 features from its Assistant product, following news that it had laid off "hundreds" of employees from the division. The company is cutting "underutilized features" to "focus on quality and reliability, it wrote in a blog post, even though a good number of people may still rely on those functions. From a report: The 17 functions being removed include: accessing or managing your cookbook; using your voice to send an email, video or audio message; rescheduling events in Google Calendar with your voice; and using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media. It also describes what Assistant can still do related to those functions, or alternate ways of doing them. A list is here, though Google said they're just "some" of the affected features.

For the full list...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Killed by Google [killedbygoogle.com].

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[linzeal]

Yep, never trust Google with your time or data.

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[alexgieg]

KbG will need a new categorization scheme, as Google is innovating. Before, they killed products outright. Now, they've moved into killing by a thousand cuts.

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[LordHighExecutioner]

We can also add to the list plenty of engineers [slashdot.org]...

So basically they're getting rid of all the stuff

[pecosdave]

That never worked right to begin with.

I successfully used my speaker to start an app on my Nvidia Shield this morning - the first time I had the phrasing figured out. I was so happy it worked, but I still had to pick up the remote to select what I wanted it to do after it launched it, but hey, the TV was on and the Shield was booted before I got to the remote.

I don't want to talk about how bad speech to text is. I had my kids verify they understood my words quite plainly in the car when I tried to reply to a text with with "Driver" and it kept putting in "DR".

I'm of the suspicion a lot of the Google stuff that's frustrating is broken on purpose so we don't suspect how good the A.I. really is.

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[dargaud]

When it came out I have a geeky colleague (the kind that ALWAYS tries out all the new stuff, no matter how alpha bad it is) who spent months yelling at his phone to try and do anything (write messages, play music, etc). It was such a joy to hear him like that all day long. After he got fed up with it he never tried again. The main problem I see with that is that it is unusable (or rather, shouldn't be used) with people around, so you might as well never use it. Except when alone in your car, where you shoul

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[Calydor]

Pretty sure getting into a heated, angry argument with your phone removes even more attention from the road than simply typing out a calm email while driving.

And no, that's not to advocate typing while driving.

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[farble1670]

Except when alone in your car, where you shouldn't use anything.

On the contrary it's legal, and safe to use voice commands with control your smart device while driving. Of course anything can be a distraction (such as music, or someone talking), but it comes down to the ability to 100% keep your eyes on the road.

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[pecosdave]

Yeah, most systems I know of (including my own) won't even display the text of the message, it will only read it.

One of my coworkers sent a copy-paste of a log-dump to my phone while I was driving the other day, my stereo sounded like it had an aneurysm and my eight year old laughed every time it said "carrot" a dozen times or so in a row....

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[thegarbz]

I'm of the suspicion a lot of the Google stuff that's frustrating is broken on purpose

I'm of the suspicion you speak with a funny accent. Don't worry so do I, but I look around and there's plenty of people who have zero problems Google, Alexia, Siri or whatever and yet I find each of them equally useless and unable to understand me too.

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[pecosdave]

I have a bit of a southern twang, but not a thick one, and I can consciously make it go away. In the late 90's when we were playing with the speech to text pagers at one of my old companies I was consistently the most accurate source speaker. - reference - when I moved to Arizona the locals thought I was a local - I now live in Houston and blend in. I'm a bit of an accent chameleon, I do tend to adopt the local accent, and I do have the Houston area one now, but Houston really isn't thick and I make an e

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[farble1670]

That never worked right to begin with.

Like starting a stopwatch? How hard could it be? The list of removed features https://support.google.com/ass... [google.com] includes several things I used.

They recently removed one of my most used features: the ability to turn on a controlled device for a limited amount of time ("ok google turn on the light for an hour"). My guess is that some lawyer didn't want them getting sued for leaving a toaster on and burning down the house. Who knows though. The magic comes from being able to speak normally to these devices and

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[pecosdave]

My favorite ability is asking definitions.

My eight year old is always asking what something means, I just hit the button on my steering wheel (if I'm driving) or say "hey Google" if I'm home and let that answer.

I also have a big thick old Webster's Dictionary at home and I've taught him how to use it.

quality and reliability.

[wyHunter]

So, you cut stuff , remove features, but say you're concentrating on 'quality and reliability.' If you had quality and reliability issues prior, removing features and using the staff to shore up crap code seems like it would be a good idea. But who knows?

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[linzeal]

Looks like they are jelly of Alexa's driving features and care more about upselling their AI in cars than selling consumer AI speakers.

I fully expect Google to sunset all their home automation eventually. It is what they do best.

I need an assistant to work my Assist product :)

[Mirnotoriety]

"The 17 functions being removed include: accessing or managing your cookbook; using your voice to send an email, video or audio message; rescheduling events in Google Calendar with your voice; and using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media."

Lawnmower savings

[bickerdyke]

That lists looks like some middle management went to all Assistant teams and required everyone to come up with some cost cutting measures.

So stopwatch gets axed while countdown timer and alerts are still in? There's a reason why that's usually bundled in one app on your phone.

Creating calendar events stays in while moving existing events gets the axe? Biggest maintenance item here is probably the integration between calendar and assistant - and that needs to be maintained nonetheless.

Re:Lawnmower savings

[jenningsthecat]

That lists looks like some middle management went to all Assistant teams and required everyone to come up with some cost cutting measures.

My first take on it was different, given the seeming focus on eliminating voice interactions.

Google is first, foremost, and always an advertising company. They want to discourage users - who are, after all, the company's product - from engaging in activity that separates their eyeballs from potential ad impressions and other forms of "engagement".

I don't think this is about cost cutting so much as it is about keeping people glued to their screens.

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[bickerdyke]

Well, that whole list is about what got cut from Assistant - that revolves around voice activities.

And that's where they just sacked a few hundreds employees (actually, their hardware department). So that was to be expected. I'm expecting something like that in the fitbit area, too.

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[farble1670]

And that's where they just sacked a few hundreds employees (actually, their hardware department).

That's telling. Home feels like it's been on life support for many years now. This is probably the first step towards discontinuing the product. You'd think that Home would an excellent platform to sell their AI platform.

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[bickerdyke]

Yes.

When they gave conversational actions the axe, the basically destroyed what made Alexa successful: an interface for 3rd party to extend the capabilities.

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[thegarbz]

I don't think this is about cost cutting so much as it is about keeping people glued to their screens.

Your post would be more meaningful if any of the example applications had a "screen" workaround that actually involved ads. They don't. You don't get ads in driving mode, in Google Calendar, in messaging, or when sending an email.

By gluing people to the screen your conspiracy would achieve nothing at all.

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[silentbozo]

I used to be a heavy google maps user, but I couldn't take them spamming my phone screen with pins which I would inevitably fat finger while trying to move the screen or select a position, which would trigger an ad that would completely derail what I was trying to do... which is look up directions.

It's as obnoxious as throwing up a modal while I'm trying to accomplish a task, asking me to "rate the app".

MBA PHB management in action

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Forget listening to users or applying critical reasoning skills, their M.O. is to arbitrarily kill every feature and product that isn't instantly, absurdly profitable.

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[sinkskinkshrieks]

2/ Never bet on Google products. They're all half-baked, half-assed, and subject to being killed whenever some moron at Google decides to.

Previous Story

[bill_mcgonigle]

So these are the engineers they just laid off?

Obviously few users use it to manage their cookbook and most users use it to send messages (at least in cars).

More likely: they have these working in the lab with an AI model so they're firing engineers replaced by AI.

Time will tell.

How many people are using google assistant?

[Luckyo]

I know I don't use it at all, and I actively try to make it as hard as possible for it to be accidentally activated. It's annoying AF how it's hard coded to react to certain button presses and activate when you grab your phone in a wrong way.

Honestly, if they removed it entirety, it would be a quality improvement for my phone. Do people actually find value in trying to tell their phone what to do with their voice (the limited amount of features it can actually do) instead of using touch controls to do same things?

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[Kiliani]

Agreed. I'll use it when it works as well as in Star Trek ... the original series (queue Spock: "Computer: ...")

Voice to text is still comically bad across the board. I use it occasionally when my hand hurts from too much typing - to get a rest. Saves zero time, the amount of editing I have to do afterwards is, in itself, painful. Pun intended. Granted, I have to write a lot of more complex text, and I am ok with rare technical terms coning out wrong. But still, if *that* is state of the art, then I won't l

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[Tony Isaac]

I use it all the time. For a lot of answers, I find it a lot easier to just ask Google, than to search by typing. I also like that it reads the answers out loud, which is useful when I'm with a group of people who want to hear the answer.

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[Luckyo]

Interesting. Do you find that it understands you well enough for this purpose, especially in a crowd?

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[Tony Isaac]

Yes, actually, it's surprisingly good in a crowd. And it is tuned to my voice, so if somebody else tries to ask my phone something, it ignores them. Unfortunately, my son's voice is enough like mine that it thinks he is me!

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[Luckyo]

Did you do something special to tune it to your voice, or did it learn it over time on its own?

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[Tony Isaac]

When you start using Google Assistant, it walks you through a voice recognition process, by asking you to say a few words.

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[Luckyo]

And that was enough in your case? Can you detail the blood sacrifice you had to do while saying those few words?

I jest, but this has been the experience with voice learning part of google assistant when I poked at it once.

Re: How many people are using google assistant?

[functor0]

I use it all the time for TVs and lamps. For the lamp, it's in inconvenient location in the bedroom but it's easy to tell Google to turn it off as I exit from the adjoined bathroom. The TV because my son never remembers to turn it off when he goes dinner so I just turn it off from the dinner table instead needing to run to the family room.

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[Luckyo]

I guess you're one of those few people that actually has to think for a bit when you get the email telling you that your google account is hacked, and they have your compromising pictures. Because it is pretty likely to be true.

Jesus the level of privacy raping access you are giving to google.

There is someone on this department yet?!

[aristofeles]

Great news!
So there is hope that, maybe even before 2030, "continue conversarions" will be avaiable for non-english users!
I've been wating for 5 years, but I'm sure this is REALLY DIFFICULT tro "translate" this for the rest of us.

Cookbook: Killer app?

[Whatever Fits]

I honestly purchased the dumb little screen so that I could have a hands free cookbook in the kitchen. That worked out terribly due to many factors, mostly because it just plain didn't work. I would say "Start cooking" and it would respond with "I don't understand" or I would press a button on the screen and it would respond with "I don't understand." Their assistant has got to be about the dumbest thing to use. No wonder they are cutting these items. The quality of the assistant (and most other Google prod