As I understand it, Google mostly ships new stuff that they let die because it's one of the only ways to get a promotion at Google - to ship a product.

Once shipped, the newly promoted staff moves on to something else, and the business people take a look and see if the product actually makes any sense from a financial perspective, which is rarely the case.

Their new icons are so dumb. I think they thought people would get used to them but no, they’re still bad after several years.

It does take me several seconds to realize which one is which, so I sometimes go by their arrangement on my home screen. Avant-garde design, I guess.

Same, never had that issue with the old logos

I imagine more as in using them for local voice. Without that, it's still dependent on connecting HA to Google Home. And outside of a fairly expensive hardware replacement module it ends up being cheaper to go other routes.

No need for this. A Z-Wave or Zigbee thermostat does the same thing.

The Google Nest Mini is a smart speaker, not the smart thermostat with a similar name.

I know it's not the same, but my ecobee is fine and i think it avoids most mass surveillance stuff. They nuked the API but beetstat.io is cheap and nice.

If you want just a temp sensor https://apolloautomation.com/products/temp-1

The Nest Mini is not a thermostat.

I have been saying for years my phone was so much smarter in 2015. I don't know what happened. I could rename it talk to it and it was responsive and did what was asked. Crazy.

Amazon Alexa has followed the same trajectory.

I still miss Google Now

Mine used to be fantastic for recipes. It was nice having a small screen in the kitchen dedicated to recipes and background music. You could ask it for a recipe, it would automatically search for one, trim the mandatory “story of my family eating this meal so I can copyright it as a creative work” intro, and compile the recipe in easy-to-follow steps. But now I ask it for a recipe, and it just goes “I didn’t understand, but here are the search results.” Which just opens a web browser, meaning all the biggest reasons to use it (not digging through search results, skipping the intro, compiling everything into a step-by-step list that you can follow along with, etc) are all gone.

I only had it because it was a gift, but it was honestly extremely handy when my hands are busy and I didn’t want to be digging around on my phone constantly. But not anymore, because at least I have an adblocker on my phone.

I have a Google smart speaker that I got as a freebie. I used to use it (>3 years ago) for timers, alarms, etc. and had few problems, I just stopped when I moved and didn't set it up. I put them back up a few months ago and it sure seems worse to me. Always triggering on random conversations, or to dialog on TV. Anyway they are permanent residents of the closet now. They suck.

I want to run my own voice processing service, ideally. Something that runs off of my home assistant server, would be cool if it made use of a Coral AI or similar.

How is the speaker in that? I have some atoms and the speaker sucks. Thinking about buying a bunch of these Google devices and replacing the PCB but I'd rather save the time if something like this actually has good sound.

XD, I totally did this to make a smart alarm clock a couple years ago. That said it is completely stable, don't think it has ever crashed or locked up on me, unlike the echo show it replaced that did so frequently (not to mention it occasionally updating in the middle of the night and waking me up at full brightness)

My understanding is the software is the problem, I don't understand why though.

I s2g i will set my house on fire before i allow a unmodded google device in it

I do wonder, is it possible to flash custom firmware onto the nest cameras? I don't have any, but it would be a pity for alright hardware to go to waste.

I used to support the Home team. I saw them grow from nothing when I worked there. It’s pathetic what they are doing to everything.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

How tf are they still convincing users to join, or try new products is the real question.

It is because it doesn't listen to me constantly. You need to open the app and press the button.
I mean, you can let it listen, I just don't.