Gemini Is Coming to Rescue Google Home. I Think.

I’ve written about Google Assistant’s tendency toward driving me into lunacy through its selective hearing, stubbornness, and frankly, demonic nature. We may not have much longer to endure, as Google Assistant on Google Home devices seems to be on its way out, with Gemini for Home coming to replace it.

Gemini, Google’s competitor to ChatGPT, seems far more capable than the older, though still consistently updated, Google Assistant. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t come fast enough.

help coming from the heavens

Even though I still find my Google Nest Hub useful enough to endure its annoying tendencies, I haven’t been alone in my frustration with Google Assistant.

All my fellow Google Nest owners who’ve followed our collective descent into glorious madness even spurred Google’s chief product officer of Google Home & Nest, Anish Kattukaran, into admitting how poor the service has gotten lately.

“Hey everyone, I want to acknowledge the recent feedback about Google Assistant reliability on our home devices. I sincerely apologize for what you’re experiencing and feeling!” wrote Kattukaran, assuring pissed-off users that Google was working on addressing it.

Well, Google’s rescue of Google Assistant seems not to be so much as throwing it a lifeline but rather stepping on its head and submerging it under the waves as it welcomes aboard Gemini for Home, a home-focused version of its much smarter generative AI, Gemini.

“Gemini for Home is built on the same powerful AI models (as Gemini), with unique capabilities designed for the home,” Google wrote in an August 20 blog post.

Gemini Live is also a new capability arriving on Google Home devices. All you’ll have to do to start a Gemini Live conversation is say, “Hey Google, let’s chat,” and then you can have a regular discussion without having to say “Hey, Google” constantly.

I’m excited and cautiously hopeful that Gemini’s long-awaited, inevitable introduction to Google Home devices will alleviate my complaints over the long-in-the-tooth Google Assistant.