Is the Google Assistant doomed? The evidence is starting to pile up that the division is going down the tubes. The latest is news from CNBC's Jennifer Elias that says the Google Assistant division has been "reshuffled" to "heavily prioritize" Bard over the Google Assistant. It all sounds like the team is being reassigned.
We'll get into the report details in a minute, but first a quick recap of the past two years of what the assistant has gone through under Google:
- Google Assistant saw eight major speaker/smart display hardware releases in five years from 2016-2021, but the hardware releases seem to have stopped. The last hardware release was in March 2021. That was two full years ago.
- 2022 saw Google remove Assistant support from two in-house product lines: Nest Wi-Fi and Fitbit wearables.
- 2022 also saw a report from The Information that said Google wanted to "invest less in developing its Google Assistant voice-assisted search for cars and for devices not made by Google."
- Google Assistant's driving mode was shut down in 2022.
- Google Assistant's "Duplex on the web" feature was also shut down in 2022.
- One of Google Assistant's core unique features, Reminders, is being shut down in favor of Google Task Reminders soon.
- Google Assistant has never made money. The hardware is sold at cost, it doesn't have ads, and nobody pays a monthly fee to use the Assistant. There's also the significant server cost to process all those voice commands, though some newer devices have moved to on-device processing in a stealthy cost-cutting move. The Assistant's biggest competitor, Amazon Alexa, is in the same boat and loses $10 billion a year.
Each one of those developments could maybe be dismissed individually, but together they start to paint the familiar picture of a looming Google shutdown.
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Google Assistant Might be Doomed: Division “Reorganizes” to Focus on Bard
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(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday April 04, @12:46AM
The feature set of Google "products" constantly changers. Is this nothing more than an evolution of the "product" combined with spiffy new marketing?
(Score: 1, Troll) by SomeGuy on Tuesday April 04, @12:57AM (4 children)
I could have told you this sort of stuff was doomed from day one. Voice assistants have always been a nice toy with no real hope of ever evolving in to anything actually useful. The sort of thing only an idiot would buy, unfortunately there are a lot of idiots out there.
The only reason they hung on this long was because vendors were hopeful they could find some new ways to mine user data that they could get away with and/or insert advertisements. Now that all the tech companies are massively laying off and putting products on the chopping block, this crap rightfully gets the axe.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @01:16AM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @01:45PM
And the old or infirm. My mom fell years ago and couldn't move. "Alexa call ". My phone started ringing.
Of course there'a a "for pay" service in the US called "Life Alert"....except it has the stigma of "being old". Whenever I would bring it up with my mom, her reply was "No, that's for old people. I just turned 70 last year, I'm not old." or "70's the new 50."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @01:42AM
>The sort of thing only an idiot would buy, unfortunately there are a lot of idiots out there.
That is entirely a matter of perspective. From the perspective of the sellers (hardware, advertising, user profile data, etc.) it is very fortunate that so many people are willing to provide value in exchange for these sorts of things.
>Voice assistants have always been a nice toy with no real hope of ever evolving in to anything actually useful.
Laying in bed, discussing plans for the weekend, want an updated rain forecast? That's a common use we make of the voice assistant. It's also good for calling out the day's weather when you're standing at the closet deciding. It is easier to turn lights on and off by barking at it than fiddling with a touch screen interface, or god forbid moving your carcass across a room to a physical switch. I don't trust mine to open/close the garage door or similar things, but some people do... Would I die if my voice assistants were taken away, certainly not, but I will say: they're the best alarm clock I have ever had, complete with voice command to STOP the alarm.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @12:42PM
I'm an amputee and I have balance problems that make it risky to walk in the dark, so being able to turn lights on and off without having to walk to the light switches is very helpful. The ability to call for help (for example) even if I don't have my phone on me is also useful.
But I guess I'm just an idiot because you don't find things like that useful.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @01:49AM (4 children)
So, I tried ChatGPT, and while it's batting average is somewhere around 400 (/1000), that's on par with first or second try search results for me. The thing is: it will try, possibly fail, but at least give it a shot, and I'd say it's more correct about the things that it says than most meatbags I converse with on similar topics.
Bard, on the other hand, refuses to give coding examples, refuses to give guidance on navigating the Medicaid bureaucracy, and is no better at writing song lyrics than ChatGPT. Right now, I'd give Bard a batting average of around 225.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @02:06AM
It can be coaxed into outputting some crappy code, but usually spits out the built-in refusal. Yeah it sux. If they improve Bard they need to loudly announce it so people like us come back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @03:59AM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 04, @06:17PM (1 child)
Sure, but is Bard better in any other statistics? Like fielding or running? Maybe Bard is much better at stealing bases.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @08:17PM
To be fair, I've only gone three innings with Bard - maybe it does shine somewhere, but those "I am an AI, I won't do that" messages that come up when the alternatives are just going for it are exceptionally Lame.
As far as I'm concerned, all AI is just stealing bases, reading back those old blog posts that I read myself years ago but can't quite put my finger on today, but a quick query to the AI interface and it regurgitates all the half-baked information that I've long ago learned and forgotten - sometimes multiple times.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @02:25AM (4 children)
Google Assistant's driving mode was shut down
Well, duh! How long before somebody gets in a shouting match with their voice assistant and blames that on the crash that killed your Cocker Spaniel (or worse)?
It's one thing for somebody to be "misusing" a phone feature while operating two tons of steel moving at 80mph, it's something else entirely when the manufacturer calls it a "driving mode" feature.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Tuesday April 04, @10:11PM (3 children)
The driving mode was used only when you're using your phone's screen while driving. With most cars now coming with onboard screens and Android Auto, very few people still looks at their phone's screens anymore.
I find Google Assistant still very useful when I need to send a WhatsApp message or set a Maps destination while driving, I can activate it with a button on my steering wheel and do the whole task without averting my gaze from the road.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @10:19PM (2 children)
>very few people still looks at their phone's screens anymore.
We have four cars, manufactured in 2002, 1999, 1999 and 1991... I guess we aren't Google's target audience, even though we use phone based navigation extensively in both our older owned cars and newer rentals.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Thursday April 06, @10:09AM (1 child)
So you have 20+ years old cars, what's your point?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @11:29AM
We also use Android phones.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 04, @02:28AM
When the big actors started signing contracts for a percentage of the profits, the studios quickly figured out ways for highly successful movies to turn almost no profits whatsoever (much like Corporate America has done for decades when tax time rolls around...)
"Google Assistant has never made money. The hardware is sold at cost, it doesn't have ads, and nobody pays a monthly fee to use the Assistant."
How much are advertisers paying for the increased targeting effectiveness? On the one hand, it's creepy. On the other hand, if you must show me advertisements, I prefer them to be about something I _might_ be interested in, and the Google eavesdropping on our voice assistant targeted ads certainly hit the mark closer than Facebook's women in yoga pants.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 04, @10:43AM
They seem to be shutting down everything they start up: is it like the airplane analogy?
The plane loses one engine and the pilot says it'll take another hour to reach their destination. They lose a second engine and it'll take another hour. They then lose the third engine and it'll take another hour. A passenger says "If they lose the last engine, it'll take forever to get where we're going!"
If they shut down Google/Alphabet, look at all the money they'll be making then!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday April 04, @07:40PM
So this is my theory, someone at Google goes by the handle "Zero". Every time this person gets involved in a Google division results in "Division by Zero". Has to be.
(Score: 1) by Zappy on Wednesday April 05, @09:17AM
Google Assistant is horrifically bad at everything I've tried to use it for. And when it does something, it is woefully inconsistent. In a dual lingual home, some commands work in one language when a direct translation doesn't or only partially.
It's really mind-boggling bad, there is no excuse for it being this terrible after so much development time.
Nobody, well at least I didn't expect it to be very useful out of the gate, but with about a decade of data behind it... I expected better.
By now It should have enough training data and be able to do 'normal' everyday stuff. So far, it cannot reliably turn lights on and off, call somebody from your address book, or navigate 'home' instead of going to some random place whose name remotely resembles 'home'.
Maybe transferring a bunch of people to Bart accelerate Bart and reintegrate it back into the assistant. Or given the current state of the assistant it might doom Bart once and for all.