Is Google Assistant / ecosystem getting worse?
I’ve been down lately due to some health issues. Basically I’ve spent the better part of the last 5 months having difficulty walking, breathing, or existing. As such I’ve sort of claimed a spot on a chair and been there quite a bit and conversing with Google Home/Assistant more than I normally would. Maybe that’s what I’m having issues with, but here’s what I’ve noticed.
On the Pixel 7 Pro if I ask assistant to skip 25 seconds to get around a very specific ad that is 40 seconds long, sometimes it will recognize the command and execute it in 5 seconds, sometimes 15. The phone has the text of what I’ve asked within half a second of when I finished asking but somewhere out in the net is a service that appears it’s overwhelmed, and sometimes it’s instant.
Asking assistant a question on my phone can take anywhere from 4 to 20 seconds now to get an answer. This is connected via T-Mobile or Wi-Fi (AT&T). I guess the fact that it responds at all should amaze me but I feel it used to work significantly better.
I have an air conditioner hooked in through a Cielo home device. If I open up Home, I can occasionally turn the unit on by that but I find that quite often switching it on it just doesn’t. It sits and spins and after a while it pops back to the default. I then go verbally ask a Nest unit to turn it on and no problem. I can always change the temperature via assistant or home but not the power state. That just comes and goes (this is more of a Home problem)
On the same topic there are many times when I’ve gotten that services could not be reached. I go to an app and they’re fine. May not be Google’s fault, but the experience definitely seems worse than when I started. Once again, perhaps this was because I’ve been using it significantly more because getting up has been a struggle (story about knee “surgery” yesterday I’ll skip).
Wife’s “find my phone” keeps telling her lately it doesn’t recognize her voice on two of the units. I discovered if she goes in and uses the Nest Hub Max it will recognize her no problem. The original, minis, Lenovo Smart Display, not so much. Recognizes me fine anywhere.
Nest’s home/away assist seems to recognize my wife is at home with her phone. The Nest app says “home”. Google Home starts sending alerts left and right that people are in the house. In Nest I set Away (it’s on Home,) wait a second, set Home, and suddenly everything works.
Years in and we still don’t have an intercom, or a way to block Broadcast so kids can’t spam it?
I won’t even get started with Assistant and Maps… I pull over somewhere every time now to make sure that address I need is in there and not another town 25 miles away.
Perhaps it’s always been this way. Being forced to deal a lot more with the verbal aspects of Google (driving 5000+ miles, walking being extremely difficult,) has left me feeling that it’s really started lacking on the basics, which it used to have.
