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Google lays off hundreds in Assistant, hardware, engineering teams (www.reuters.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Google lays off hundreds in Assistant, hardware, engineering teams::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago (6 children)

And they announced this morning some pretty significant feature rollbacks: https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/13971691?visit_id=638405848924404696-2744922006&p=assistant_is_changing&rd=1

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo.

Is it possible to use Duo still? Google knows it discontinued/merged Duo with Google Meet nearly 18 months ago, right?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

deleted

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I just don't get how all of these "Smart" devices continue to get stupider. Why are they removing existing features or making them worse to use?

It's gotten to the point where I'm currently working on a project to roll my own dumb smart display and speakers with a RPi, Magic Mirror, and a DAC/amp hat.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Google has no maintenance culture. Maintenance is simply not rewarded. Instead in order to get rewarded one needs to launch new things to show "impact". At some point the only way to move forward is to deprecate some unmaintained features or the entire product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Google pay and Google wallet

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Take a look at home assistant to power the speech part of the display. They have done a lot the last year and even have wake words working.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I'm not going to bother with speech on it as I don't really like talking to my devices. How assistant is definitely in consideration for the screen though if I don't get magic mirror working to my liking.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

The commute to work on smart screens going away is a headscratcher. How complicated could it be?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message. You can still make calls and send text messages.

You could never make calls. I remember trying to find my phone by asking Google to call it and it just saying “calling xyz”. Never rang, not while I was using a Google voice number, not on Google Fi, not on T-Mobile/mint.

Also, didn’t see anything about asking the assistant on the living room something and the device in the bedroom answering and vice-versa. Not sure how something so simple could be messed up. We kind of gave up on using it due to that, it isn’t even good enough to Google a question any longer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Seems like mine magically started working one day for calling. Don't need or want that function though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Also most wear os phones do not support Google assistant since the new generation