remember when google now was amazing and the envy of the tech world
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Google Now and Google Inbox were legitimately some of the most useful products any tech company has released. They were such game-changers, and I'll never stop being angry about their cancellation.
Google Now was one of those amazing things that just felt like magic. I remember I was fly in/fly out at the time and my boarding pass would always just be one swipe away, taken straight out of my Gmail on the day of the flight. Now when I swipe I get some depressing stream of news I don't read instead.
Favorite, share, and ask where and when your photos were taken with your voice.
Change photo frame settings or ambient screen settings with your voice.
Translate your live conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language with interpreter mode.
Get birthday reminder notifications as part of Routines.
Ask to schedule or hear previously scheduled Family Bell announcements.
Get daily updates from your Assistant, like “send me the weather everyday.”
Use Google Assistant on car accessories that have a Bluetooth connection or AUX plug.
Thanks, was hoping someone would do this lol
Google Assistant becoming less and less useful
That's the idea. They want Gemini to supercede it, but they released it feature incomplete compared to assistant.
I wouldn't mind it, if it could do the basic things I need an assistant to do. When they first started pushing Gemini, I couldn't even get it to do simple things like send a text or a set a reminder. I'm sure it's gotten better since then, but just immediately failing at what I would consider the bare minimum really soured Gemini for me. Still haven't reinstalled it, counting down the days until Google forces it on me.
At this point my Google Home is basically an alarm clock. If that goes, I'm throwing it into the trash.
FUCK GENAI
At this rate, Google will pull so many features the Home Assistant, Whisper/Piper combo will have parity.
The only thing I'm missing from my OSS voice assistant is, "where is my phone"... And I'm fairly certain I could figure out how to get that working if I tried hard enough.
I know several people who run through the house screaming "Siri, where are you?" Does this not work on Android? This is a serious question because I don't really use voice assistants.
I say "Hey Google, where's my phone"
Rings my phone at max volume