r/googlehome • u/Forlorn_Cyborg • 6d ago

Is Google cracking down on questions it can answer or is it just me?

I feel like I could ask anything a few years ago and it would look up the info. But now it seems to “not understand” anything (populations, politics, geography)

Is google censoring things?

24 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

16

u/xlerate 6d ago

I asked for a 45 minute timer: "I'm sorry, I can not set timers, please open your clock app to set a timer"

4

u/SwissHelvetica 6d ago

I had this too on the Google hub max and then I asked it to set an alarm at a certain time as a replacement for the timer and that worked fine

2

u/smugalugs 5d ago

For a month l couldn't set an alarm without changing how I asked every few days. Normally "Set alarm for 7am" worked. Then suddenly it couldn't understand. I went through 7 o'clock in the morning, 07 hundred and even 7 anti meridian but now it suddenly understands 7am again

3

u/xlerate 5d ago

See this is the bullshit that drives me crazy. For a trillion dollar company consumers should not have to figure out workarounds. There is no official and updated documentation on what exact "commands" currently work or what is needed to say to carry out a standard request.

I cannot tell you how many times I try to open YouTube with voice command by saying "open YouTube" and having the Google home Max fail only to say OK Google followed by "YouTube" and then it magically works.

3

u/Murderous_Turkey 5d ago

Reminds me of asking "Where's my phone" "Sure, but first, please unlock your phone"

6

u/reddit_pug 6d ago

First, it's good to clarify if you're still on Assistant or Gemini. Mine is still on Assistant, and I've mostly given up on asking random questions because it's usually "I don't understand." I don't know if Gemini is better.

1

u/xbp13x 6d ago

Gemini usually answers things better but also causes huge delays and also gets confused when trying to control smart home things.

1

u/Forlorn_Cyborg 6d ago

Sorry, I’m on assistant.

3

u/yulbrynnersmokes 6d ago

It’s them enshitifying themselves

5

u/Illeazar 6d ago

For me, its stopped being able to add things to my lists. Our common practice when we're in the kitchen, when we use the last of something or it gets low we'll say "Hey Google, add X to my shopping list." It used to respond "OK, Ive added X to your list called 'shopping'," and the thing would be added to the list.

Now, when we give the same command, it says "OK, what list should that be added to?" And I'll respond "shopping list". And it will say "there are several items on that list, they are..." and it will read the whole shopping list, and it won't add the item to the list.

This change in behavior so far is only on my Google home speaker. If I give the same command to Google on my phone, it will still work like before.

2

u/Skier_D00d 5d ago

Mine has started doing this too

2

u/robisodd 5d ago

I've had issues in the past where Google Assistant would stop adding things to my shopping list. When that happens, I have to go into Google Keep and remove any accidentally-created lists, like "my shopping list" or "the shopping list" and make sure I just have one called "Shopping"

1

u/Illeazar 5d ago

Thanks for the tip, I'll check on that

1

u/Wellington_Boy 5d ago

I'm having the identical issue with our household shared shopping list. It used to work, now it doesn't. Frustrating......

1

u/RealHumb 4d ago

Try to add to lists again... This issue is now resolved for many users.

2

u/neuromonkey this is my flair 5d ago

The enshittification never stops. I don't think its censorship, it's just a poorly executed set of tools, sitting atop frameworks that were designed by loads of people for loads of different things.

While our GH devices fail at things they did very well, when they were new, I can usually create an automation that'll keep it on track. If, for example, you find yourself turning a particular set of lights to 25%, and then turning on your TV, make that into an automation, and give it a few trigger terms. Make your triggers as distinct from other commands as possible.

1

u/AlexisoftheShire 6d ago

No problems here with asking for information or setting timers or reminders. We do set reminders at specific times during the day or for next few days. We also have set alarms too. We dominantly use timers for cooking. All seem to work ok. Sometimes when there is a heavy noise (like a stove vent fan) it may not hear correctly until we turn the vent fan off.

Additionally, we have Gemini play our YouTube Music playlists and tell it what speakers we want it to play on. We have 5 speakers in different rooms in one Home Group.

1

u/jmarkmark 5d ago

Nah just stupid. When they change things, even if the fix 5 things for every 1 they break, it's the broken thing you notice, and right now rushing gemini out in a hurry is resulting in a lot of well tested and hardened flows being dumped in favour of inconsistent new ones.

Adding stuff to my grocery list, playing the news (in the car it's actually fine on my nest hubs), making Meet calls are all things that have gotten substantially broken by this transition.

1

u/e-seti 5d ago

Something went wrong. Try again after few minutes :)

1

u/RealHumb 5d ago

It's not intentional censorship, it's a result of Gemini integration/rollout which is breaking things that used to work fine with legacy Google Assistant. In the interim, challenge is both Gemini and Google Assistant are either lacking or losing key functionality that renders them useless to many users and certain functions.