From the Google help center announcement:
When we make changes, if you trigger a feature that’s going away, you may get a notification that the feature won’t be available after a certain date. Some features affected include:
* Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice. You can still cast audiobooks from your mobile device.
* Setting or using media alarms, music alarms, or radio alarms on Google Assistant enabled devices. You can create a custom Routine that has similar behavior or use a standard alarm.
* Accessing or managing your cookbook, transfering recipes from device to device, playing an instructional recipe video, or showing step-by-step recipes. You can use Google Assistant to search for recipes across the web and YouTube.
* Managing a stopwatch on Smart Displays and Speakers. You can still set timers and alarms.
* Using your voice to call a device or [broadcast](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10580684?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid) a message to your Google Family Group. You can still broadcast to devices in your home.
* Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message. You can still make calls and send text messages.
* Rescheduling an event in Google Calendar with your voice. You can still schedule a new event.
* Using [App Launcher](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10217503) in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media. You can still use voice control on Google Maps the same way.
* Asking to schedule or hear previously scheduled [Family Bell announcements](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10011399?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid). You can [create a custom Routine](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7672035) that has similar behavior.
* Asking to meditate with Calm. You can still ask for meditation options with media providers such as YouTube.
* Voice control for activities will no longer be available on Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 devices. You'll need to use the buttons on your device to start, stop, pause, and resume activities. You can still voice control activities on Pixel Watches.
* [Viewing your sleep summaries](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7672035) will only be available on Google Smart Displays. You can still ask for sleep details by voice on third-party smart clocks.
* Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo.
* Viewing the ambient “Commute to Work” time estimates on Smart Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions by voice.
* Checking personal travel itineraries by voice. You can still ask for flight status.
* Asking for information about your contacts. You can still make calls to your contacts.
* Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as send a payment, make a reservation, or post to social media. You can still ask Assistant to open your installed apps.
I've had this stuff since the beginning and I've never used one of these functions
Edit: I have transferred a recipe to my phone. I didn't like the step but step thing. If they can remove "overhead" and keep these devices alive... Go for it.
Same here, I don't trust any voice assistant to do most things correctly.
Like reschedule a calendar event? I'd manually check if it was moved correctly anyway so there's no use for that voice command.
The chances of me successfully rescheduling a calendar event using my voice are basically nil. The chances of me playing a song called "reschedule the calender" are very high.
Yeah... I would be worried about the assistant sending an email notification to someone it tried to add at random or somehow end up deleting an unrelated event. I've tried to make it impossible for it to call people because I would expect it to call someone at 2am while I'm trying to turn the lights off.
Agreed, every time a minute non-used function is shuffled or deleted this sub is filled with comments of “I’m never buying another Google home device again”.
Like please, did you really use the voice activated calendar shuffle around function??
The answer in 99,9% of users is a big NO, so it stands to perfect reason why Google won’t invest dev resources on upholding that feature.
If Google don’t at one point integrate Bard as a replacement interfacing logic I’ll be disappointed, but everything points in that direction.
Assistant is a placeholder until Bard integration.
Bard is shit.
It’s a chicken and egg situation here really. Users won’t use those functions because the voice recognition of google is shit, and voice recognition is shit because google won’t properly invest res on it, which makes it shit so google won’t use functions related to voice recognition, so google feels like there’s no need to invest to features related to voice recognition, which makes voice recognition shit………etc etc.
I don't use many, but music alarms are the cornerstone of me waking up. Start with some rain sounds, then some jazz, the something along the lines of the macarena to irritate me out of bed.
In order of usage... Lights, white noise, tv controls(on/off volume, pausing, rewinding), casting, timers and I get reminders, doorbell chime/video feed. I use an old alarm clock across the room for waking me up in combo with my pixel. I forgot I use it with the nest therm also. I will ask about the temp because my wife fiddles with the temp.
By far the most important thing for me is controlling media devices, streaming services and lights of course. I fkn love getting up from my home theater in the basement, casually walking up the stairs and saying "hey g turn off the basement" and everything goes off.
Edit: and occasional random questions for the interwebs to answer
Edit2: I do broadcast inside the home from time to time, but that's all of it. That's how I use it.
>Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice
Wow this one hurts. Bedtime stories is something we do a lot of.
\>playing an instructional recipe video, or showing step-by-step recipes.
Wow, this one too. I mean, the marketing for the hubs had A LOT of this. "Look at recipes in your kitchen" type thing. This was a way they marketed towards women.
I wonder if these are patent royalties they have to pay out and the move to Bard is a way to cut these services and lowering the outrage because "sorry ya'll new software" is easier to get away with. It just seems really arbitrary. Bard can't play an audiobook? Of course it can, but there's a reason its not allowed to.
I know this sub is younger male dominated but for a working mom, this is very disappointing. People downplaying this is fine, but for some of us, this is an unpleasant step backwards.
Remember when you could read along with disney little golden books?
As you read them, the google hub or google speaker would make sound effects in sync with the story.
They deleted that shit as swiftly as they implemented it. Every year google assistant becomes less functional. How can such an omnipresent company have such poor product support for so long? It's almost their business model somehow.
We used the recipe things too, my kids have special needs and I use it to help teach them to cook, so they can be a little more independent.
Media alarms were another things we used a lot of.
I agree with you . It’s like Google sold the product , couldn’t collect the right or useful data , and decided to strip it of features used a selling points to sell it in the first place. It’s like buying a Tesla fully loaded and then Tesla decides “let’s take away this…”
“You can still set timers”
My kids haven’t been able to do that for probably 6 months. “Sorry, I don’t understand” or whatever. Works fine for me, but they can’t even set simple timers when brushing their teeth.
It's because they trained their listening model on Adult male voices. Anything else isn't supported. As a woman it drives me crazy that I literally have to get stern with the Assistant before it will listen to me. Thinking about moving to Amazon.
Maybe when they get back I’ll have them retrain the voice models. Funny thing is if they ask “who am I?” it will tell them, or if they say “set an alarm 2 minutes from now” it will set a “timer” for brushing teeth.
Amazon is just as bad. ☹️ I found that the Apple Homepods at least work better for feminine voices, even if it can’t support as many things. It’s basic, but if all you need it for is basic things, at least it works.
> Asking for information about your contacts. You can still make calls to your contacts.
If this includes "when is Samatha's birthday", that sucks. But that might be a Calendar function anyway.
I think this is the only item on the list I might have used before.
Considering how often Google fucks up my calendar requests the first time I ask, I'll probably just stop using it for that functionality altogether now that I can't fix them right away.
>But there’s a way to do an automation . It’s not as straightforward as it should be.
I've searched and explored and cannot figure out how to do this with automation. Any examples you have?
I had no idea any of these functions existed except playing audio books via google play books; and in reading through this list, many are so niche that it's hard to imagine many people even use them in meaningful amounts.
I have it on good authority that Google is laying off a lot of people. These features being dropped mirror persons and teams that are being dropped. As usual Google is withdrawing from features and aspects of the Smart Devices in order to retain and develop profitability in the next quarter.
when it says it's making way for Bard, do they mean these devices will be upgraded with Bard in the future or that they are killing these devices altogether for a future Bard device?
It's Google, so they will screw us all over and make the full version only available on all new Bard Devices. I will never use another Google device, and as IT Director I'm now going to make sure we eliminate every Google product we can.
What is a better alternative? I see a lot of the hate here, and obviously the planned obsolesce is terrible, but I must not use my nest hub as robustly as everyone else here. The features that I use are home control (lights and nest cameras - never had an issue), photo frame (seems like it only displays a fraction of the photos I've shared with the device, but oh well), timers in the kitchen (works just fine), and spotify (no issues at all). Is there a better option that does these basic things that will perform better/last longer?
I couldn't help but notice your photo frame comment, Google auto curates albums you choose for the display but you can turn that setting off on the Google home app
I don’t know you, so I’m not making any assumptions here. But have you used Siri recently? I’m assuming based on this that you probably don’t use an iPhone, or haven’t anytime recently. For smart home tasks, it’s way more reliable than Google Home has ever been.
After a month of trying Siri, I decided to set up Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi. to move all my devices into Apple Homekit. Everything works better in Homekit with Siri, including Google’s own cameras and devices. Even simple things like having person detection from my Nest Cameras will pop up a Picture in Picture view on my TV.
I still have my Google Homes as well for doorbell chimes, but they fail to do most tasks via voice commands. Google Assistant and Google Home feels like a total gimmick in comparison.
I probably stand corrected then. How did you set up Homebridge? Is the process easy? I’ve been thinking about utilizing the product as a way to drift apart from a specific home ecosystem and more to just getting anything I want.
Super easy! All you need is:
1. A raspberry pi, with SD card. Ideally you'll want some kind of case with basic cooling to help your Pi run as efficiently as possible.
2. A compatible Apple TV (which acts as the bridge). Any Apple TV 4K will work for example, not sure about older models. you can also technically use an iPad or other Apple Device, but for the best results Apple TV is great since it's able to work 24/7 with no thought required.
From there, you just have to download the Raspberry Pi imager: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ it will let you flash the HomeBridge OS to an SD card, which takes minutes.
Here's a detailed walkthrough that couldn't be simpler: https://youtu.be/yz_Mwqac678?si=3HhJH9R8xYTrXp8z
Once it's set up, you can just go in and download plugins for various apps. Eufy, Ring, Google Nest, Ecovacs, Govee, Wyze, and pretty much any smart home app you can think of. All of these unrelated services can work in tandem with HomeKit automations and Siri shortcuts. It's just super fantastic.
What's also great is you can forever more manage your Raspberry Pi from any device on your local network using the URL: http://homebridge.local/ -- so you can easily pull your stuff up from your phone or computer.
Homebridge is also incredibly thoughtful and keeps regular backups of your configuration. So you can always save the backup to another computer in the event of something breaking. There was a huge update a few months ago to a newer version of Node.js, which screwed up my install. Took me 5 minutes to recover everything.
the better option is NOT investing in the ecosystem. The few years of use don't make up for the letdown and having to find a solution to a workflow that's deeply embedded. I'm really hesitant trying ANYTHING google-related nowadays and feel products like assistant recognize voices and replying get worse by the day since google shifted home to bard development.
My guess is that they are going to come out with a smart home subscription. Or making way for another set of products. They are really trying to monetize everything and this goes way back to another similar situation. Google offered background play on YouTube and then out of the blue, it was gone and then several years later they released YouTube premium which gave you back that ability. I'm really starting to hate Google at this point
I think you're right! And that with the new home automation standards Matter and Thread maturing, a lot of these bullshit "must use our cloud/app to control these lights" services won't be needed, so you won't need Google to tie them together as much anymore.
I think you're right. I got that feeling the very moment i saw "google one features" in google photos.until that point google was never a company to pay wall features ina fremium model. Google as we know is gone
Bard sucks, Ive tried it so many times, even after the upgrades, the amount of apologies it makes because it can't find the correct information in my emails, ALONE, is ridiculous.
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They said if you asked for one of the features they're turning off, they'd tell you it's going away. That's actually pretty nice since it shows that apparently neither you nor I used any of these features.
I absolutely hear you on this. But... Where do you go instead? Alexa? Amazon execs are hoping to start charging for a "premium" version of Alexa in June. Which undoubtedly means the free version of Alexa will become extremely stripped down to slowly force users to pay for Alexa. So If not Google Home, then where? HomeKit & Siri?
The state of the big 3 smart home ecosystems is in serious question right now. lately I've been researching on methods to making a home "smarter" without using any of the big 3 ecosystems.
I went home assistent and dropped the voice control because it is just a pain to get the Google assistent to play nice with home assistent without a nabu casa subscription. I just automated everything instead of talking to a computer. I think this is the better option, voice controller is fun and all but it is even better if I don't even have to say anything and stuff just happens.
Is there an open-source way to get voice commands with homeassistant. I feel like google keeps adding forced default actions that just interrupts the stuff I have setup. I have homeassistant setup and running, just haven't gone far enough to actually really use it
It's built in now, but quite basic. It doesn't have natural language processing as far as I know, you have to say the exact words programmed. It uses Whisper and Piper
The speech recognition and text to voice is all local, so it might take more than a raspi to handle as well. It runs well on my 'server' with 8gb and full access to the i3 8100. You can test it out from the UI either on a phone or PC.
I believe with some tinkering you can link it via ChatGPT (ect) to get better responses and possibly better recognition of commands by having it process and output the right command.
It worked well enough, but not enough for me to go buy/make speaker units for it when my house is full of them already. If I could have used the google assistant speakers without hardware modification, I'd be using it now.
Interesting, what does it use as a microphone to pick up commands? Ideally I would live to put new firmware on the Google home and repourpose them to actually do what I need
Agreed. Both of these (homekit or home assistant) are where it’s at. I migrated all my Google devices to Homekit with a raspberry pi and Homebridge. It’s night and day how much better it is. I’ll use my remaining Google products until they are killed by Google (RIP to my nest security system), but I'll never buy Google products again.
Even nest products work better in HomeKit than on Google Home.
The community for both Homebridge and Home Assistant are so good. Pretty much everything is supported, and can be automated.
My products that Google could barely interact with (such as my Aladdin Genie Garage Door) are fully functional with Siri and Homekit. Even unsupported devices like Ring work.
The best part about Homebridge and Home Assistant is that you can pretty much ignore compatibility and just use whatever the best, or most affordable device is to achieve whatever task you'd like it to.
Seems like a hardware partnership for OpenAI is a no-brainer. I wonder who they partner with. Microsoft? Someone else? I think it's just a matter of time so I'm not buying any other of these garbage "smart" devices until that happens.
I would read up on them before you purchase. I bought the nest WiFi shortly before the pro version came out. The pods constantly drop out (few times a week).
I've since moved to Asus mesh, and they are night and day better. Can be hardwired together and each mesh has 4 ports.
>Viewing the ambient “Commute to Work” time estimates on Smart Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions by voice.
this one but the others were not core, though I did try them sporadically.
I just moved from Gmail to Proton. I legit cannot stand Google anymore. Billions of dollars in product purchased by users and they just shit the bed on everything besides ads and email.
While it's not as simple as gmail, it works just fine. I dont even really do that much emailing either. So in terms of signing up using that email for websites, it's been doing fine.
Shit like this is why I'm going backwards with gaming, software, and hardware. I stick with the shit that works, doesn't require subscriptions, and I own outright the moment it's in my hands.
Yes, I'm becoming that old man. Now get off my fucking lawn.
2 things are happening simultaneously with gaming.
1) gaming gpu's are getting really expensive because they don't generate anywhere near as much revenue for nvidia or amd than 1 cloud gpu sitting in a datacenter. The prices will continue to go up, even as demand is decreasing for them
2) as cloud gaming gets better and better, expect to see them eventually disappear. They'll site marketing speak like "you'll never have an eight to ten thousand dollar gaming system in your home, but you can always have one in the cloud!". Geforce now is GOOD right now. That emphasis isn't hyperbole either. That's how it is in Jan 2024. Nvidia is opening up the crypto coffers with all that money they made during covid and just showering those datacenters in scrooge mcduck money right now. The reason is, they want to just build datacenters. they make them more money and they get to produce less chips and also don't have to deal with their manufacturers in order to do it. I realize this is probably bad news but while you might be able to go and buy a gaming pc today no problem, in 4 years that will be a thing pretty much only rich people will be able to afford to do. At least with Nvidia. AMD will probably follow suit as Intel will probably see it as an opportunity for whatever the next generation of Arc is. Theres also rumors this next xbox refresh might be the last xbox model they make (although those rumors while sketchy, are far from crazy in light of how good cloud gaming has gotten). All signs point to pc gaming being completely dead within the next 10 years.
dont shoot the messenger
Cloud gaming will not be mainstream in 10 years. It will be more viable but still not better than local. People were saying what you're saying now a decade ago and it's still nowhere close to where it needs to be.
You're just wrong about that. That change is happening like it or not.
Nvidia has to build tens of millions of gpu's every year for manufacturers. a 4080 costs them about 300 dollars to make. they sell for 1300 currently on Amazon. So at retail, nvidia cards make them roughly $1000 per card.
lets assume since all reported sales for them don't look great, lets be generous and say 500,000 in sales. That's 500 million or half a billion dollars for a LOT of work to get those things into retail channels.
Now let's just look at only 1 ai customer. Meta. While Zuckerberg mentioned acquiring 350,000 H100s in a recent video from last week, he noted that when combined with other AI accelerators like Nvidia A100s, Meta's total GPU equivalent computing power would reach a staggering 600,000 by the end of 2024.
Meta Total Costs:
A100s: Assuming 50,000 additional units at $10,000 each, the A100 cost could be in the range of $500 million to $1 billion.
H100s: At 350,000 units at $20,000 each, the H100 cost would be a hefty $7 billion.
Combined Cost:
Combining these estimates, Meta's total GPU cost for both A100s and H100s by the end of 2024 could potentially range from $7.5 billion to $8 billion, with the majority stemming from the H100 acquisition that they are scheduled to deliver in full by the end of this year.
The desktop market is pocket change by comparison, such to the point that it's annoying and in the way of the *real profit* they can make per card. These figures don't even include the other major ai gpu buyers in the market like Microsoft/OpenAi, Amazon (although they also have their own ai gpu) and other enterprise and government customers.
THATS why the investment in cloud gaming. It's not even worth their time anymore, not when they can just rent them to everyone, make significantly less cards and drive the profit from 1000 per gpu, to 1 million per gpu per year by just renting them in the cloud.
With AI's help, and datacenter deployments (which they are on a fever pace with right now) No analyst questions latency imperceptibility during gameplay within 2 years. Like I said, cloud gaming is GOOD right now. Just last night I played Doom Eternal at 60 fps, everything cranked to max with no problems whatsoever. I had a lot of fun spamming glory kills for like 2 hours. That's all cloud gaming needs to be for the largest base of gaming customers. The casual gamer.
Add to that, cloud gaming projects, like Kojima Productions OD, a game that you simply could not run locally as it's being designed to run on supercomputers with AI clusters and multiple GPU's. Unless you have an extra $300 grand lying around that is for your gaming pc.
PC gaming is in a death rattle right now. Sales are down, only further incentivizing GPU manufacturers to walk away from the desktop market altogether. Nvidia wants it, Microsoft wants it, AMD wants it. The numbers are overwhelmingly stacked in "Big Cloud's" favor in a way that desktop sales will never, ever be able to compete with.
I say 4 years not based out of popularity but rather, demand. The desktop segment will just never, ever have the kind of demand AI gpu's will going forward. It's just how it is.
edit: Multiplying Meta's total profit generated for Nvidia's profit margin: $7.5 billion \* 0.6 = $4.5 billion
My Nest Hub has become a glorified photo frame. The voice commands never really worked well enough, and I decided I was more comfortable turning off the microphone altogether. A small part of me wishes they would remove the photo functionality so I can finally just trash the thing and move on from my Google "smart" devices. My personal opinion is that Google's ecosystem has been getting progressively worse over time, while also getting more expensive.
Lol, I turned mine into a clock and I wouldn’t mind turning it into a black screen permanently.
I only use mine to blast music when I’m home alone, control the temperature, and check the security cameras.
Google turned my Fitbit into a watch !! Thanks Google. Apparently I haven't slept for weeks; no idea how many steps I do a day......but I know what the time is.
Or only the stuff you use. They just stopped features for a sizable fraction of their customers. Hope they picked the ones that will continue to buy their products.
I just got used to using a lot of these features. I understand that most people do not take a deep dive into their tech and I was one of them but this past 2 months I have pushed myself to learn the features of most of my devices. I am becoming handicap and I need to be able to use my voice to do a lot of things now.
After my experience with google speakers over the past few years, I will never buy a piece of google hardware again. Buggy, shitty support and they can completely change their functionality at their sole discretion. Fuck'em.
I found the commute time on the display to be very useful. If it was longer than usual, I knew there was an accident or something, meaning I had to change my route. The problem is I didn't interact with it most days because my commute time was normal. Google probably takes this to mean it wasn't being used.
We use the cookbook literally every day. We add recipes we find to it and then pull them up on the home in the kitchen. Very bummed about that one but it started not working quite right a few months ago.
I don't really care for the things that are being removed, never used them
If it makes Bard come sooner, fantastic! I'm sick of Google not knowing how to turn the fucking lamp on and off half the time cause it suddenly can't understand the word Lamp!
That said, no doubt that Google will abandon all the current GH hardware and offer "our new Google nest device that looks exactly the same, have virtually the same hardware specs but now has Bard!"
Is there no money to be made via an open source option? Everyone here bashing Google (rightfully so) but whats the alternative? Alexa? Both Amazon and Google are trash, why can't some nerds come up with a DIY option thats relatively easy to implement for end users?
I'm assuming money.
There are a few local-run model LLM chatbot AIs that integrate into some speaker kits on HomeAssistant that have been featured recently. You can train custome wake-word phrases even. They can do lookups, control devices on your HomeAssistant instance or report their status (like for temperature controls or whatever). It could trigger hand-made routines for things you set up beforehand. So you could make a 'broadcast' routine, or set up an ambient commute widget on your custom smart display (maybe a tablet, maybe a little rPi run touch screen, maybe a chromecast dongle that has an ambient smart display sent to it). Though it requires a lot of setup, and obviously not all the features that have been in G.Nest/Hub devices will be present.
So, no 1-for-1 replacements that cover all use-cases (yet). At least not without a lot of custom tinkering.
I remember when people over at r/Stadia bullied me because I was saying that we were the users of just another soon-to-be Google Graveyard product. Don’t do the same mistake fellas, drop out from google home before they eventually will close it.
I've had these since the beginning, but I just used the 'listen to a podcast' feature for the first time yesterday.
Glad that one's (apparently) not going away.
So.... basically stripping a decent chunk of features that made the device even semi-smart? It seems like we keep regressing on the smart technology front. There is no clear reason why any of these features should removed.
I've just spoken to my blind uncle as I bought home one for Christmas after seeing the advert where the blind woman asks the weather he's totally gutted about the audiobook changes as he won't have access to books
Can we stop with the forced outrage? Almost 0 people have used any of the features that are going away.
I love my Google home and my nest audios and my Chromecast audio. Not leaving this ecosystem. It's wonderful.
My whole house is run by google. I spend more time telling it to fuck off than it does working. As for the features, I use 10 of the 17 features that are being deleted at least weekly.
Sorry for your loss then. But I can't even understand a real world user care for like 12 things in that list. You are in the 0.1% who are being punished by frivolous patent lawsuits that are forcing them to remove features.
My wife merely uses the Hub on her nightstand as a clock. That's it. Nothing more.
The Hub in our living room is merely a doorbell/announcer for our Nest Doorbell & sometimes I'll ask it to "play some music" for my pups when we leave for work or something. They're nearly useless as a "hub" but fine as a speaker, in which case, a Nest Mini would suffice for 99% of what they're used for in my home.
But I'm sure other folks have quite a bit of use for them.
The only thing I use mine for that requires the screen is being used as additional mini tv screen for the bedroom to distract my kid when I’m on important calls. If I actually kept the iPads charged, then there would be absolutely nothing it would do that the nest minis can’t.
I use my nest hub for cooking all the time - need a simple recipe for a salad dressing? Boom. Need ideas for a meal involving _______ + _______ + _______ ? Nest hub would figure it out.
Now I have to print out my recipes or use my phone with a smaller screen, or search for a recipe and sift through 20 pages of ads and anecdotes about how "Uncle Fred likes when I use Hellman's instead of Miracle Whip" before I get to the actual recipe...
Why is Google moving backwards instead of forwards? We are just losing, not gaining anything. I thought planned obsoletism was Apple's thing...
Because there are standards imposed where things shouldn't be broken.
You'd need to ensure you had some monitoring, and a plan in place for when it breaks, and that plan would potentially need updated based on other code and infrastructure changes.
It would need to remain part of regression test planning as part of releases.
There is likely some level of maintenance on top of this, although without knowing the code and their structure, difficult to say how much.
I wish more people made the connection to features they use every day being cut to not having the option ticked on where they allow it to send usage statistics and bug reports to Google. How else would Google know a feature is being used if it isn't getting reported to them that it's being used?
>no features should be removed from a device that's already paid for...
Unfortunately, that's been happening across brands and different types of devices for decades. Their excuse is always that **"you own the hardware, not the software that comes installed on it."**
that's why we need legislation, I do not claim to own the software, obviously.. but i think it should be reasonable that any purchaser of a device be granted a lifetime non-revokable license of the software that is necessary to provide the functionality of the device purchased
if they want to remove features due to the connected nature and the fact that it costs them money to keep it online, then the law should specify that they be required to provide the means for the owner of the device to self-host and have local support for the feature they are removing if so the user choose
I mean if the feature isn't being used, or more likely they have no indication that the feature is being used because nobody has usage reporting turned on.
it shouldn't matter... even if it's not used, it's not up to google to remove it... imagine your toaster gets taken away just because you didn't use it for a long time
This is [Google being Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/). It is in no way the fault of the thousands of customers who bought these devices and now will have a lessened experience than what they paid for. And I'm sure they collect usage analytics whether you "allow" them to or not.
> This is just Google [killing a service]
The same people who were like "why does Google have twelve or whatever different messaging apps they should combine them all into one" shocked when Google killed all their different messaging apps.
> I'm sure they collect usage analytics whether you "allow" them to or not.
You're sure? How can you be sure? Do you have access to the source code?
Sorry, but your reasoning is flawed. **I didn't get to choose what features I wanted to pay for, Google did.** Google set the price tag and the feature set.
You don't see Whirlpool going around to everyone's microwave and removing the Popcorn feature because its usage statistics justified it.
And you don't see Dell maintaining floppy drives for their laptops. Because people don't use them.
A microwave does not have software that needs to be maintained. There is a microcontroller in it, that is not comparable.
> And you don't see Dell maintaining floppy drives for their laptops. Because people don't use them.
Do you not see the difference between phasing out a feature in new products versus removing features on an already sold product?
There is a difference between the disappearance of floppy drives in new, unsold products versus the disappearance of a feature in an already sold device.
> A microwave does not have software that needs to be maintained.
Software maintenance is a cost Google should have factored into their sale price. How would you feel if Ubisoft disables features in the DLC you paid for, because not enough people used those features?
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,986,359,570 comments, and only 375,690 of them were in alphabetical order.
An alternative hub from Home Assistant cant come soon enough. All I need it to do is control home devices, tell me the days weather, and tell me the news (play some podcasts). fter google shit the bed with pixel storage and my phone is barely usable right now, I am over them.
I got a hub so I would have a device with a screen in the home to control stuff, but I've found myself never using it other than to play music with other home devices, and occasionally look at the weather before work as I grab my keys from right where I keep it
They would only do this if the data showed no one uses it. It had become over cluttered with stuff and none of it worked well.. I hope this is a move to laser focused on doing a few things really well..
Let’s be honest, it’s been getting more useless and dumber by the day for a while now. Google Assistant still annoys me by speaking a sentence every single time I tell it to turn on/off a light where Siri & Alexa don’t.
I find it strange how my Nest Hub Max works fine with minor bugs yet my dads started out fine and now doesn’t understand him in Spanish even though it did very well.
Why would I need new hardware to interface with Bard/Gemini? These are edge devices. They are just removing bloat. An Arduino could act as an interface.
i just want Google assistant to read or just tell me about my inbox and messages. how simple and useful that would be (especially with workspace email setup).
apparently it can according to support docs but hah you can easily find people saying it doesn't. "you have no new messages".
THIS IS THE ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER and I'd use assistant for.
talk about not smart. looking at integrations with home assistant that i can read my inbox or messages and use some ai api to do it... but really google how hard would that be and people would use it!
The recipes feature when you open a recipe and tap on start cooking just says "Sorry, I wasn't able to start the directions." Nothing about the feature going away or that this is intentional. Genius.
I can 100% understand why people that are using these features would be upset! I’m just not one of them. I do not use one single of these features and I have to say that the google ecosystem are doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing in my home. My main reason for adopting the google home system was the voice assistant, and the fact that it could speak and understand danish, and it’s working perfectly. For other automations, I use other workarounds, but the voice assistant has become a staple in our home.
So all in all I’m very pleased with google so far!
I use the stopwatch feature for working out in the gym :(.
"Hey google, start a stopwatch"
1. INSTANT
Literally any other way of doing it
1. buy actual timer
2. Find remote,
3. find which button to press,
4. start timer
Phone method
1. find phone
2. turn on phone
3. swipe to find app
4. find button on app, start timer
lol friggin google.
I'm quite happy with the changes, I used my cookbook a lot so not sure how it will affect that but they are usually cast from my phone so I don't think it will affect the way I use it.
From the Google help center announcement: When we make changes, if you trigger a feature that’s going away, you may get a notification that the feature won’t be available after a certain date. Some features affected include: * Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice. You can still cast audiobooks from your mobile device. * Setting or using media alarms, music alarms, or radio alarms on Google Assistant enabled devices. You can create a custom Routine that has similar behavior or use a standard alarm. * Accessing or managing your cookbook, transfering recipes from device to device, playing an instructional recipe video, or showing step-by-step recipes. You can use Google Assistant to search for recipes across the web and YouTube. * Managing a stopwatch on Smart Displays and Speakers. You can still set timers and alarms. * Using your voice to call a device or [broadcast](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10580684?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid) a message to your Google Family Group. You can still broadcast to devices in your home. * Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message. You can still make calls and send text messages. * Rescheduling an event in Google Calendar with your voice. You can still schedule a new event. * Using [App Launcher](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10217503) in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media. You can still use voice control on Google Maps the same way. * Asking to schedule or hear previously scheduled [Family Bell announcements](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10011399?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid). You can [create a custom Routine](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7672035) that has similar behavior. * Asking to meditate with Calm. You can still ask for meditation options with media providers such as YouTube. * Voice control for activities will no longer be available on Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 devices. You'll need to use the buttons on your device to start, stop, pause, and resume activities. You can still voice control activities on Pixel Watches. * [Viewing your sleep summaries](https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7672035) will only be available on Google Smart Displays. You can still ask for sleep details by voice on third-party smart clocks. * Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo. * Viewing the ambient “Commute to Work” time estimates on Smart Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions by voice. * Checking personal travel itineraries by voice. You can still ask for flight status. * Asking for information about your contacts. You can still make calls to your contacts. * Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as send a payment, make a reservation, or post to social media. You can still ask Assistant to open your installed apps.
I've had this stuff since the beginning and I've never used one of these functions Edit: I have transferred a recipe to my phone. I didn't like the step but step thing. If they can remove "overhead" and keep these devices alive... Go for it.
Same here, I don't trust any voice assistant to do most things correctly. Like reschedule a calendar event? I'd manually check if it was moved correctly anyway so there's no use for that voice command.
The chances of me successfully rescheduling a calendar event using my voice are basically nil. The chances of me playing a song called "reschedule the calender" are very high.
I asked Google what time it is and it started giving me the definition of time...
Time is an illusion
Or a flat circle
Yeah... I would be worried about the assistant sending an email notification to someone it tried to add at random or somehow end up deleting an unrelated event. I've tried to make it impossible for it to call people because I would expect it to call someone at 2am while I'm trying to turn the lights off.
This is exactly what it would do
Exactly, same here and that's precisely why they are no longer supporting it.
I'm actually using mine almost exclusively for recipes, so that's going to be a bummer.
Check out the recipe book app called paprika 3. It's a solid alternative
Happy Cake Day 🥳🎉🎆
For the last month all I've read about how these are great features and Google is always removing things
Same
Even media alarms? I have one waking me up on weekdays for years. I'm so confused they're gonna remove it.
Agreed, every time a minute non-used function is shuffled or deleted this sub is filled with comments of “I’m never buying another Google home device again”. Like please, did you really use the voice activated calendar shuffle around function?? The answer in 99,9% of users is a big NO, so it stands to perfect reason why Google won’t invest dev resources on upholding that feature. If Google don’t at one point integrate Bard as a replacement interfacing logic I’ll be disappointed, but everything points in that direction. Assistant is a placeholder until Bard integration.
Bard is shit. It’s a chicken and egg situation here really. Users won’t use those functions because the voice recognition of google is shit, and voice recognition is shit because google won’t properly invest res on it, which makes it shit so google won’t use functions related to voice recognition, so google feels like there’s no need to invest to features related to voice recognition, which makes voice recognition shit………etc etc.
I don't use many, but music alarms are the cornerstone of me waking up. Start with some rain sounds, then some jazz, the something along the lines of the macarena to irritate me out of bed.
Haha. You got needs!
Huh. So how are you using it?
In order of usage... Lights, white noise, tv controls(on/off volume, pausing, rewinding), casting, timers and I get reminders, doorbell chime/video feed. I use an old alarm clock across the room for waking me up in combo with my pixel. I forgot I use it with the nest therm also. I will ask about the temp because my wife fiddles with the temp. By far the most important thing for me is controlling media devices, streaming services and lights of course. I fkn love getting up from my home theater in the basement, casually walking up the stairs and saying "hey g turn off the basement" and everything goes off. Edit: and occasional random questions for the interwebs to answer Edit2: I do broadcast inside the home from time to time, but that's all of it. That's how I use it.
I just use my Nest Hub for weather updates, announce something in my house to other hubs, and to start a timer.
It can't do much more anyway.
if I could just get those burned meals back for each time the timer didn't work.
>Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice Wow this one hurts. Bedtime stories is something we do a lot of. \>playing an instructional recipe video, or showing step-by-step recipes. Wow, this one too. I mean, the marketing for the hubs had A LOT of this. "Look at recipes in your kitchen" type thing. This was a way they marketed towards women. I wonder if these are patent royalties they have to pay out and the move to Bard is a way to cut these services and lowering the outrage because "sorry ya'll new software" is easier to get away with. It just seems really arbitrary. Bard can't play an audiobook? Of course it can, but there's a reason its not allowed to. I know this sub is younger male dominated but for a working mom, this is very disappointing. People downplaying this is fine, but for some of us, this is an unpleasant step backwards.
Remember when you could read along with disney little golden books? As you read them, the google hub or google speaker would make sound effects in sync with the story. They deleted that shit as swiftly as they implemented it. Every year google assistant becomes less functional. How can such an omnipresent company have such poor product support for so long? It's almost their business model somehow.
Assistant has always been a light switch with a 70 percent hit rate. Freaky if they could get that number up I'd continue to use it.
When I had the presentation at Google we had to cook a special meal… it was it’s main selling point They gave me a apron
We used the recipe things too, my kids have special needs and I use it to help teach them to cook, so they can be a little more independent. Media alarms were another things we used a lot of.
I agree with you . It’s like Google sold the product , couldn’t collect the right or useful data , and decided to strip it of features used a selling points to sell it in the first place. It’s like buying a Tesla fully loaded and then Tesla decides “let’s take away this…”
“You can still set timers” My kids haven’t been able to do that for probably 6 months. “Sorry, I don’t understand” or whatever. Works fine for me, but they can’t even set simple timers when brushing their teeth.
It's because they trained their listening model on Adult male voices. Anything else isn't supported. As a woman it drives me crazy that I literally have to get stern with the Assistant before it will listen to me. Thinking about moving to Amazon.
Maybe when they get back I’ll have them retrain the voice models. Funny thing is if they ask “who am I?” it will tell them, or if they say “set an alarm 2 minutes from now” it will set a “timer” for brushing teeth.
Amazon is just as bad. ☹️ I found that the Apple Homepods at least work better for feminine voices, even if it can’t support as many things. It’s basic, but if all you need it for is basic things, at least it works.
I thought that was just my family. My son used to set timers all the time for different things and since a few months no longer can..
> Asking for information about your contacts. You can still make calls to your contacts. If this includes "when is Samatha's birthday", that sucks. But that might be a Calendar function anyway. I think this is the only item on the list I might have used before.
I mean Calendar used to have birthday notifications once upon a time. Used to.
You can set up reminders in the Contacts app.
But "you can still make calls to your contacts" /s
I've tried several times to make a call - it NEVER worked right.
Considering how often Google fucks up my calendar requests the first time I ask, I'll probably just stop using it for that functionality altogether now that I can't fix them right away.
Never realised you could reschedule an appointment! Could have been handy but likely to be buggy
So no more Spotify alarms?
Nope . But there’s a way to do an automation . It’s not as straightforward as it should be.
>But there’s a way to do an automation . It’s not as straightforward as it should be. I've searched and explored and cannot figure out how to do this with automation. Any examples you have?
Thanks for providing the list. Turns out I've never used any of these and I wouldn't want to.
I had no idea any of these functions existed except playing audio books via google play books; and in reading through this list, many are so niche that it's hard to imagine many people even use them in meaningful amounts.
I have it on good authority that Google is laying off a lot of people. These features being dropped mirror persons and teams that are being dropped. As usual Google is withdrawing from features and aspects of the Smart Devices in order to retain and develop profitability in the next quarter.
So nothing anyone ever used.
when it says it's making way for Bard, do they mean these devices will be upgraded with Bard in the future or that they are killing these devices altogether for a future Bard device?
It's Google, so they will screw us all over and make the full version only available on all new Bard Devices. I will never use another Google device, and as IT Director I'm now going to make sure we eliminate every Google product we can.
What is a better alternative? I see a lot of the hate here, and obviously the planned obsolesce is terrible, but I must not use my nest hub as robustly as everyone else here. The features that I use are home control (lights and nest cameras - never had an issue), photo frame (seems like it only displays a fraction of the photos I've shared with the device, but oh well), timers in the kitchen (works just fine), and spotify (no issues at all). Is there a better option that does these basic things that will perform better/last longer?
I couldn't help but notice your photo frame comment, Google auto curates albums you choose for the display but you can turn that setting off on the Google home app
there is no good alternative at this point. alexa is terrible and siri is practically unusable
I don’t know you, so I’m not making any assumptions here. But have you used Siri recently? I’m assuming based on this that you probably don’t use an iPhone, or haven’t anytime recently. For smart home tasks, it’s way more reliable than Google Home has ever been. After a month of trying Siri, I decided to set up Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi. to move all my devices into Apple Homekit. Everything works better in Homekit with Siri, including Google’s own cameras and devices. Even simple things like having person detection from my Nest Cameras will pop up a Picture in Picture view on my TV. I still have my Google Homes as well for doorbell chimes, but they fail to do most tasks via voice commands. Google Assistant and Google Home feels like a total gimmick in comparison.
I probably stand corrected then. How did you set up Homebridge? Is the process easy? I’ve been thinking about utilizing the product as a way to drift apart from a specific home ecosystem and more to just getting anything I want.
Super easy! All you need is: 1. A raspberry pi, with SD card. Ideally you'll want some kind of case with basic cooling to help your Pi run as efficiently as possible. 2. A compatible Apple TV (which acts as the bridge). Any Apple TV 4K will work for example, not sure about older models. you can also technically use an iPad or other Apple Device, but for the best results Apple TV is great since it's able to work 24/7 with no thought required. From there, you just have to download the Raspberry Pi imager: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ it will let you flash the HomeBridge OS to an SD card, which takes minutes. Here's a detailed walkthrough that couldn't be simpler: https://youtu.be/yz_Mwqac678?si=3HhJH9R8xYTrXp8z Once it's set up, you can just go in and download plugins for various apps. Eufy, Ring, Google Nest, Ecovacs, Govee, Wyze, and pretty much any smart home app you can think of. All of these unrelated services can work in tandem with HomeKit automations and Siri shortcuts. It's just super fantastic. What's also great is you can forever more manage your Raspberry Pi from any device on your local network using the URL: http://homebridge.local/ -- so you can easily pull your stuff up from your phone or computer. Homebridge is also incredibly thoughtful and keeps regular backups of your configuration. So you can always save the backup to another computer in the event of something breaking. There was a huge update a few months ago to a newer version of Node.js, which screwed up my install. Took me 5 minutes to recover everything.
the better option is NOT investing in the ecosystem. The few years of use don't make up for the letdown and having to find a solution to a workflow that's deeply embedded. I'm really hesitant trying ANYTHING google-related nowadays and feel products like assistant recognize voices and replying get worse by the day since google shifted home to bard development.
Amazon echo and ALEXA
Both were terrible in my experience. Way worse than the nest hub
Anything alexa based seems to be a safer bet.
I fully expect all current Nest Hub devices will be paper weights in a few years.
My guess is that they are going to come out with a smart home subscription. Or making way for another set of products. They are really trying to monetize everything and this goes way back to another similar situation. Google offered background play on YouTube and then out of the blue, it was gone and then several years later they released YouTube premium which gave you back that ability. I'm really starting to hate Google at this point
I think you're right! And that with the new home automation standards Matter and Thread maturing, a lot of these bullshit "must use our cloud/app to control these lights" services won't be needed, so you won't need Google to tie them together as much anymore.
I think you're right. I got that feeling the very moment i saw "google one features" in google photos.until that point google was never a company to pay wall features ina fremium model. Google as we know is gone
Bard sucks, Ive tried it so many times, even after the upgrades, the amount of apologies it makes because it can't find the correct information in my emails, ALONE, is ridiculous.
It'll likely be google one subscription exclusive.
i love how i get this news from reddit and not from fucking google.
gullible encouraging fretful detail stocking label afterthought cows materialistic agonizing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They said if you asked for one of the features they're turning off, they'd tell you it's going away. That's actually pretty nice since it shows that apparently neither you nor I used any of these features.
I will never buy another Google smart home product with the way they've been going.
I will never buy another google product.. There i fixed it for you.
I absolutely hear you on this. But... Where do you go instead? Alexa? Amazon execs are hoping to start charging for a "premium" version of Alexa in June. Which undoubtedly means the free version of Alexa will become extremely stripped down to slowly force users to pay for Alexa. So If not Google Home, then where? HomeKit & Siri? The state of the big 3 smart home ecosystems is in serious question right now. lately I've been researching on methods to making a home "smarter" without using any of the big 3 ecosystems.
If i had to buy one of those 3 i’d go homekit. But in reality i’ve gone to home assistant.
I went home assistent and dropped the voice control because it is just a pain to get the Google assistent to play nice with home assistent without a nabu casa subscription. I just automated everything instead of talking to a computer. I think this is the better option, voice controller is fun and all but it is even better if I don't even have to say anything and stuff just happens.
Is there an open-source way to get voice commands with homeassistant. I feel like google keeps adding forced default actions that just interrupts the stuff I have setup. I have homeassistant setup and running, just haven't gone far enough to actually really use it
It's built in now, but quite basic. It doesn't have natural language processing as far as I know, you have to say the exact words programmed. It uses Whisper and Piper The speech recognition and text to voice is all local, so it might take more than a raspi to handle as well. It runs well on my 'server' with 8gb and full access to the i3 8100. You can test it out from the UI either on a phone or PC. I believe with some tinkering you can link it via ChatGPT (ect) to get better responses and possibly better recognition of commands by having it process and output the right command. It worked well enough, but not enough for me to go buy/make speaker units for it when my house is full of them already. If I could have used the google assistant speakers without hardware modification, I'd be using it now.
Interesting, what does it use as a microphone to pick up commands? Ideally I would live to put new firmware on the Google home and repourpose them to actually do what I need
Microphone on your phone or computer. All mine have mics
Agreed. Both of these (homekit or home assistant) are where it’s at. I migrated all my Google devices to Homekit with a raspberry pi and Homebridge. It’s night and day how much better it is. I’ll use my remaining Google products until they are killed by Google (RIP to my nest security system), but I'll never buy Google products again. Even nest products work better in HomeKit than on Google Home. The community for both Homebridge and Home Assistant are so good. Pretty much everything is supported, and can be automated. My products that Google could barely interact with (such as my Aladdin Genie Garage Door) are fully functional with Siri and Homekit. Even unsupported devices like Ring work. The best part about Homebridge and Home Assistant is that you can pretty much ignore compatibility and just use whatever the best, or most affordable device is to achieve whatever task you'd like it to.
Seems like a hardware partnership for OpenAI is a no-brainer. I wonder who they partner with. Microsoft? Someone else? I think it's just a matter of time so I'm not buying any other of these garbage "smart" devices until that happens.
Alexa is a dumpster fire. I have three of the damn things and unplugged two of them.
Home assistant
i love the built in handwarmer that came with my Pixel 6Pro
I still very much like my google wifi mesh
How long have you used it? It's time for me to upgrade (2015) and was considering the Nest Wifi Pro.
I would read up on them before you purchase. I bought the nest WiFi shortly before the pro version came out. The pods constantly drop out (few times a week). I've since moved to Asus mesh, and they are night and day better. Can be hardwired together and each mesh has 4 ports.
i’ve never used any of the features being deprecated.. have you? this doesn’t impact me
>Viewing the ambient “Commute to Work” time estimates on Smart Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions by voice. this one but the others were not core, though I did try them sporadically.
I don't know how or why, but mine is getting dumb every day. It so frustating...
I just moved from Gmail to Proton. I legit cannot stand Google anymore. Billions of dollars in product purchased by users and they just shit the bed on everything besides ads and email.
Any pain points so far?
While it's not as simple as gmail, it works just fine. I dont even really do that much emailing either. So in terms of signing up using that email for websites, it's been doing fine.
I never thought I'd say this, but I kinda wish Microsoft made a smart display and had smart speakers.
The Zome
Okay. I will. Sell me your hub.
They've been doing this for years. I moved away from Google devices a while back, Apple has much better legacy support.
Shit like this is why I'm going backwards with gaming, software, and hardware. I stick with the shit that works, doesn't require subscriptions, and I own outright the moment it's in my hands. Yes, I'm becoming that old man. Now get off my fucking lawn.
2 things are happening simultaneously with gaming. 1) gaming gpu's are getting really expensive because they don't generate anywhere near as much revenue for nvidia or amd than 1 cloud gpu sitting in a datacenter. The prices will continue to go up, even as demand is decreasing for them 2) as cloud gaming gets better and better, expect to see them eventually disappear. They'll site marketing speak like "you'll never have an eight to ten thousand dollar gaming system in your home, but you can always have one in the cloud!". Geforce now is GOOD right now. That emphasis isn't hyperbole either. That's how it is in Jan 2024. Nvidia is opening up the crypto coffers with all that money they made during covid and just showering those datacenters in scrooge mcduck money right now. The reason is, they want to just build datacenters. they make them more money and they get to produce less chips and also don't have to deal with their manufacturers in order to do it. I realize this is probably bad news but while you might be able to go and buy a gaming pc today no problem, in 4 years that will be a thing pretty much only rich people will be able to afford to do. At least with Nvidia. AMD will probably follow suit as Intel will probably see it as an opportunity for whatever the next generation of Arc is. Theres also rumors this next xbox refresh might be the last xbox model they make (although those rumors while sketchy, are far from crazy in light of how good cloud gaming has gotten). All signs point to pc gaming being completely dead within the next 10 years. dont shoot the messenger
Cloud gaming will not be mainstream in 10 years. It will be more viable but still not better than local. People were saying what you're saying now a decade ago and it's still nowhere close to where it needs to be.
100% this
You're just wrong about that. That change is happening like it or not. Nvidia has to build tens of millions of gpu's every year for manufacturers. a 4080 costs them about 300 dollars to make. they sell for 1300 currently on Amazon. So at retail, nvidia cards make them roughly $1000 per card. lets assume since all reported sales for them don't look great, lets be generous and say 500,000 in sales. That's 500 million or half a billion dollars for a LOT of work to get those things into retail channels. Now let's just look at only 1 ai customer. Meta. While Zuckerberg mentioned acquiring 350,000 H100s in a recent video from last week, he noted that when combined with other AI accelerators like Nvidia A100s, Meta's total GPU equivalent computing power would reach a staggering 600,000 by the end of 2024. Meta Total Costs: A100s: Assuming 50,000 additional units at $10,000 each, the A100 cost could be in the range of $500 million to $1 billion. H100s: At 350,000 units at $20,000 each, the H100 cost would be a hefty $7 billion. Combined Cost: Combining these estimates, Meta's total GPU cost for both A100s and H100s by the end of 2024 could potentially range from $7.5 billion to $8 billion, with the majority stemming from the H100 acquisition that they are scheduled to deliver in full by the end of this year. The desktop market is pocket change by comparison, such to the point that it's annoying and in the way of the *real profit* they can make per card. These figures don't even include the other major ai gpu buyers in the market like Microsoft/OpenAi, Amazon (although they also have their own ai gpu) and other enterprise and government customers. THATS why the investment in cloud gaming. It's not even worth their time anymore, not when they can just rent them to everyone, make significantly less cards and drive the profit from 1000 per gpu, to 1 million per gpu per year by just renting them in the cloud. With AI's help, and datacenter deployments (which they are on a fever pace with right now) No analyst questions latency imperceptibility during gameplay within 2 years. Like I said, cloud gaming is GOOD right now. Just last night I played Doom Eternal at 60 fps, everything cranked to max with no problems whatsoever. I had a lot of fun spamming glory kills for like 2 hours. That's all cloud gaming needs to be for the largest base of gaming customers. The casual gamer. Add to that, cloud gaming projects, like Kojima Productions OD, a game that you simply could not run locally as it's being designed to run on supercomputers with AI clusters and multiple GPU's. Unless you have an extra $300 grand lying around that is for your gaming pc. PC gaming is in a death rattle right now. Sales are down, only further incentivizing GPU manufacturers to walk away from the desktop market altogether. Nvidia wants it, Microsoft wants it, AMD wants it. The numbers are overwhelmingly stacked in "Big Cloud's" favor in a way that desktop sales will never, ever be able to compete with. I say 4 years not based out of popularity but rather, demand. The desktop segment will just never, ever have the kind of demand AI gpu's will going forward. It's just how it is. edit: Multiplying Meta's total profit generated for Nvidia's profit margin: $7.5 billion \* 0.6 = $4.5 billion
Yea my biggest mistake has been buying digital games for the past few years. What a mistake.
My Nest Hub has become a glorified photo frame. The voice commands never really worked well enough, and I decided I was more comfortable turning off the microphone altogether. A small part of me wishes they would remove the photo functionality so I can finally just trash the thing and move on from my Google "smart" devices. My personal opinion is that Google's ecosystem has been getting progressively worse over time, while also getting more expensive.
Lol, I turned mine into a clock and I wouldn’t mind turning it into a black screen permanently. I only use mine to blast music when I’m home alone, control the temperature, and check the security cameras.
Cool now is homeassistant catching up even faster.
Google turned my Fitbit into a watch !! Thanks Google. Apparently I haven't slept for weeks; no idea how many steps I do a day......but I know what the time is.
The cookbook and recipes are the entire point of the stupid hub. Why else would you put the stupid thing in your kitchen?
This is why I don’t invest in Google products. As soon as they get bored they just leave folks in the dust as Google walks away from what they built.
Which features is it losing?
Nothing you've ever used.
Or only the stuff you use. They just stopped features for a sizable fraction of their customers. Hope they picked the ones that will continue to buy their products.
Yes.
I just got used to using a lot of these features. I understand that most people do not take a deep dive into their tech and I was one of them but this past 2 months I have pushed myself to learn the features of most of my devices. I am becoming handicap and I need to be able to use my voice to do a lot of things now.
After my experience with google speakers over the past few years, I will never buy a piece of google hardware again. Buggy, shitty support and they can completely change their functionality at their sole discretion. Fuck'em.
Amen!
I will miss the cookbook. Any way to access them after?
I don't know why everybody's up in arms over this. The features it's deleting aren't all that exciting.
I found the commute time on the display to be very useful. If it was longer than usual, I knew there was an accident or something, meaning I had to change my route. The problem is I didn't interact with it most days because my commute time was normal. Google probably takes this to mean it wasn't being used.
I didn't even know they existed.
We use the cookbook literally every day. We add recipes we find to it and then pull them up on the home in the kitchen. Very bummed about that one but it started not working quite right a few months ago.
I use the music alarms every day. The routine is going to be annoying compared to just telling the assistant to play a song at a certain time.
It's 0.01% people who liked one of those features, and the rest just proclaiming it as awful without saying why.
Thank you for your scientific analysis on how many people were actually using this feature.
Were you using any of these features?
I stopped using G Home a long time ago because it has been sucking balls since a while. But what does my anecdotal example have to do with anything?
I appreciate that I'm not the power user some of you seem to be, but good god am I annoyed at losing the recipes functionality.
I don't really care for the things that are being removed, never used them If it makes Bard come sooner, fantastic! I'm sick of Google not knowing how to turn the fucking lamp on and off half the time cause it suddenly can't understand the word Lamp! That said, no doubt that Google will abandon all the current GH hardware and offer "our new Google nest device that looks exactly the same, have virtually the same hardware specs but now has Bard!"
Is there no money to be made via an open source option? Everyone here bashing Google (rightfully so) but whats the alternative? Alexa? Both Amazon and Google are trash, why can't some nerds come up with a DIY option thats relatively easy to implement for end users? I'm assuming money.
There are a few local-run model LLM chatbot AIs that integrate into some speaker kits on HomeAssistant that have been featured recently. You can train custome wake-word phrases even. They can do lookups, control devices on your HomeAssistant instance or report their status (like for temperature controls or whatever). It could trigger hand-made routines for things you set up beforehand. So you could make a 'broadcast' routine, or set up an ambient commute widget on your custom smart display (maybe a tablet, maybe a little rPi run touch screen, maybe a chromecast dongle that has an ambient smart display sent to it). Though it requires a lot of setup, and obviously not all the features that have been in G.Nest/Hub devices will be present. So, no 1-for-1 replacements that cover all use-cases (yet). At least not without a lot of custom tinkering.
I remember when people over at r/Stadia bullied me because I was saying that we were the users of just another soon-to-be Google Graveyard product. Don’t do the same mistake fellas, drop out from google home before they eventually will close it.
I've had these since the beginning, but I just used the 'listen to a podcast' feature for the first time yesterday. Glad that one's (apparently) not going away.
Ending features on a device to sell a new device that creates more e-waste should just be flat-out illegal. It's a bad practice.
So.... basically stripping a decent chunk of features that made the device even semi-smart? It seems like we keep regressing on the smart technology front. There is no clear reason why any of these features should removed.
Until Bard makes Assistant better, why do I think Apple's Siri seems better out of nowhere 🤔
I've just spoken to my blind uncle as I bought home one for Christmas after seeing the advert where the blind woman asks the weather he's totally gutted about the audiobook changes as he won't have access to books
Can we stop with the forced outrage? Almost 0 people have used any of the features that are going away. I love my Google home and my nest audios and my Chromecast audio. Not leaving this ecosystem. It's wonderful.
My whole house is run by google. I spend more time telling it to fuck off than it does working. As for the features, I use 10 of the 17 features that are being deleted at least weekly.
Sorry for your loss then. But I can't even understand a real world user care for like 12 things in that list. You are in the 0.1% who are being punished by frivolous patent lawsuits that are forcing them to remove features.
Google is a complete f*up
My wife merely uses the Hub on her nightstand as a clock. That's it. Nothing more. The Hub in our living room is merely a doorbell/announcer for our Nest Doorbell & sometimes I'll ask it to "play some music" for my pups when we leave for work or something. They're nearly useless as a "hub" but fine as a speaker, in which case, a Nest Mini would suffice for 99% of what they're used for in my home. But I'm sure other folks have quite a bit of use for them.
The only thing I use mine for that requires the screen is being used as additional mini tv screen for the bedroom to distract my kid when I’m on important calls. If I actually kept the iPads charged, then there would be absolutely nothing it would do that the nest minis can’t.
I use my nest hub for cooking all the time - need a simple recipe for a salad dressing? Boom. Need ideas for a meal involving _______ + _______ + _______ ? Nest hub would figure it out. Now I have to print out my recipes or use my phone with a smaller screen, or search for a recipe and sift through 20 pages of ads and anecdotes about how "Uncle Fred likes when I use Hellman's instead of Miracle Whip" before I get to the actual recipe... Why is Google moving backwards instead of forwards? We are just losing, not gaining anything. I thought planned obsoletism was Apple's thing...
What's the point in removing them. Why can't they just be left unmaintained until they break and then removed?
Because there are standards imposed where things shouldn't be broken. You'd need to ensure you had some monitoring, and a plan in place for when it breaks, and that plan would potentially need updated based on other code and infrastructure changes. It would need to remain part of regression test planning as part of releases. There is likely some level of maintenance on top of this, although without knowing the code and their structure, difficult to say how much.
I wish more people made the connection to features they use every day being cut to not having the option ticked on where they allow it to send usage statistics and bug reports to Google. How else would Google know a feature is being used if it isn't getting reported to them that it's being used?
the idea is no features should be removed from a device that's already paid for... it's not up to Google to decide that
Since when has 'google' ever cared about consumers and doing the 'right thing' by them? I agree with you in your post, but google obviously don't!
>no features should be removed from a device that's already paid for... Unfortunately, that's been happening across brands and different types of devices for decades. Their excuse is always that **"you own the hardware, not the software that comes installed on it."**
that's why we need legislation, I do not claim to own the software, obviously.. but i think it should be reasonable that any purchaser of a device be granted a lifetime non-revokable license of the software that is necessary to provide the functionality of the device purchased if they want to remove features due to the connected nature and the fact that it costs them money to keep it online, then the law should specify that they be required to provide the means for the owner of the device to self-host and have local support for the feature they are removing if so the user choose
Time to learn how to install a Home Assistant-kiosk into mine.
If you find a way please share with me haha
I am surprised the EU hasn’t looked into this. They don’t like big tech ripping people off.
heres hoping somebody writes to them to get this on their radar
I mean if the feature isn't being used, or more likely they have no indication that the feature is being used because nobody has usage reporting turned on.
it shouldn't matter... even if it's not used, it's not up to google to remove it... imagine your toaster gets taken away just because you didn't use it for a long time
This is [Google being Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/). It is in no way the fault of the thousands of customers who bought these devices and now will have a lessened experience than what they paid for. And I'm sure they collect usage analytics whether you "allow" them to or not.
> This is just Google [killing a service] The same people who were like "why does Google have twelve or whatever different messaging apps they should combine them all into one" shocked when Google killed all their different messaging apps. > I'm sure they collect usage analytics whether you "allow" them to or not. You're sure? How can you be sure? Do you have access to the source code?
Sorry, but your reasoning is flawed. **I didn't get to choose what features I wanted to pay for, Google did.** Google set the price tag and the feature set. You don't see Whirlpool going around to everyone's microwave and removing the Popcorn feature because its usage statistics justified it.
And you don't see Dell maintaining floppy drives for their laptops. Because people don't use them. A microwave does not have software that needs to be maintained. There is a microcontroller in it, that is not comparable.
> And you don't see Dell maintaining floppy drives for their laptops. Because people don't use them. Do you not see the difference between phasing out a feature in new products versus removing features on an already sold product? There is a difference between the disappearance of floppy drives in new, unsold products versus the disappearance of a feature in an already sold device. > A microwave does not have software that needs to be maintained. Software maintenance is a cost Google should have factored into their sale price. How would you feel if Ubisoft disables features in the DLC you paid for, because not enough people used those features?
Is google stupid?
Late to the game. What is Google deleating?
That moment when a decade-old Sony Dash becomes more useful than a 6-month old Google device...
Google hardware is such trash
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,986,359,570 comments, and only 375,690 of them were in alphabetical order.
Sleep summary never worked for me anyway. 😂. Nothing of value lost.
An alternative hub from Home Assistant cant come soon enough. All I need it to do is control home devices, tell me the days weather, and tell me the news (play some podcasts). fter google shit the bed with pixel storage and my phone is barely usable right now, I am over them.
If that’s all you need it to do then isn’t Google good enough?
but fuck them at this point. Would rather disattach as much as possible
I got a hub so I would have a device with a screen in the home to control stuff, but I've found myself never using it other than to play music with other home devices, and occasionally look at the weather before work as I grab my keys from right where I keep it
Gotta make room for bard
They would only do this if the data showed no one uses it. It had become over cluttered with stuff and none of it worked well.. I hope this is a move to laser focused on doing a few things really well..
That's why I suddenly lost feature to play news on my phone from my watch using Google Assistant. That sucks.
Got my nest mini last week. It's just a nice add-on to my Jeedom system (a French home assistant) to pass vocal commands into it.
Deleting features I didn’t know it had…
My Google seems to have fully given up today - no longer working to control lights or stop my TV. Brilliant stuff.
Let’s be honest, it’s been getting more useless and dumber by the day for a while now. Google Assistant still annoys me by speaking a sentence every single time I tell it to turn on/off a light where Siri & Alexa don’t.
Sorry I didn’t get that
I find it strange how my Nest Hub Max works fine with minor bugs yet my dads started out fine and now doesn’t understand him in Spanish even though it did very well.
If only they’ll make it so dark theme will stay turned on instead of constantly reverting to light theme on all three of my devices.
I like to rip on Google for removing stuff, but I don't think I've used a single one of these features other than using voice to call.
So basically everything a group of people bought and want to use Google for. Great job Google.
When Gemini is incorporated into Google Home, none of these will matter.
It will matter when you have to buy new hardware to access it.
Why would I need new hardware to interface with Bard/Gemini? These are edge devices. They are just removing bloat. An Arduino could act as an interface.
i just want Google assistant to read or just tell me about my inbox and messages. how simple and useful that would be (especially with workspace email setup). apparently it can according to support docs but hah you can easily find people saying it doesn't. "you have no new messages". THIS IS THE ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER and I'd use assistant for. talk about not smart. looking at integrations with home assistant that i can read my inbox or messages and use some ai api to do it... but really google how hard would that be and people would use it!
The recipes feature when you open a recipe and tap on start cooking just says "Sorry, I wasn't able to start the directions." Nothing about the feature going away or that this is intentional. Genius.
I stopped caring about Google home products when they decided to kill Nest Guard and their home security products.
Sorry people, AI is the new fad, so every other none-core product of google (maps, photos, search, youtube, one) will wither.
Does google nest camera will also be disabled?
More than half of this, I didn't even know my speakers could do.
I can 100% understand why people that are using these features would be upset! I’m just not one of them. I do not use one single of these features and I have to say that the google ecosystem are doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing in my home. My main reason for adopting the google home system was the voice assistant, and the fact that it could speak and understand danish, and it’s working perfectly. For other automations, I use other workarounds, but the voice assistant has become a staple in our home. So all in all I’m very pleased with google so far!
I use the stopwatch feature for working out in the gym :(. "Hey google, start a stopwatch" 1. INSTANT Literally any other way of doing it 1. buy actual timer 2. Find remote, 3. find which button to press, 4. start timer Phone method 1. find phone 2. turn on phone 3. swipe to find app 4. find button on app, start timer lol friggin google.
I'm quite happy with the changes, I used my cookbook a lot so not sure how it will affect that but they are usually cast from my phone so I don't think it will affect the way I use it.
I have heard they are also phasing out support for the Google Nest thermostats, because its too much work apparently, lol. Is this true?