I used to do all kinds of really cool routines and home control tasks with Google home, and it could hear and interpret my voice at a mumble. I used it as an alarm clock, to do list, calendar, grocery list, lighting control, give me weather updates, set times etc. It just worked.

Now I have to yell unnaturally loud for it to even wake, and even then the simplest commands have a 20% chance of throwing “Sorry I don’t understand” or playing random music. Despite having a device in every room it has lost the ability to detect proximity and will set timers or control devices across the house. I don’t trust it enough anymore for timers and alarms, since it will often confirm what I asked then simply… not do it.

Ask it to set a 10 minute timer.

It says ok setting a timer for 10 minutes.

3 mins later ask it how long is remaining on the timer. A couple years ago it would say “7 minutes”.

Now there’s a good chance it says I have no timers running.

It’s pathetic, and I would love any insight on the decay. (And yes they’re clean, the mics are as unobstructed as they were out of the box)

I understood this problem to be "how it manages its org chart and maps that onto the customer experience."

That starts with the demonstrations which show really promising technology, but what eventually ships doesn't live up to the hype (or often doesn't ship at all.)

It continues through to not managing the products well, such as when users have problems with them and not supporting ongoing development so they suffer decay.

It finishes with Google killing established products that aren't useful to the core mission/data collection purposes. For products which are money makers they take on a new type of financially-optimised decay as seen with Search and more recently with Chrome and YouTube.

I'm all for sunsetting redundant tech, but Google has a self-harm problem.

The cynic in me feels that part of Google's desire to over-promise is to take the excitement away from companies which ship* what they show. This seems to align with Pichai's commentary, it's about appearing the most eminent, but not necessarily supporting that view with shipping products.

* The Verge is already running an article about what was faked in the Gemini demo, and if history repeats itself this won't be the only thing they mispresented.