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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

> Google home speakers are about to get slightly worse

Google are well ahead of this lawsuit, the home speakers have been getting slightly worse since Google lost interest and moved on a couple of years ago.

Say what you will about Alexa, but it is the only voice assistant that seemingly keeps improving, Siri is statically-terrible and while Google Assistant was once good, it is worse now than then somehow (although functionality/integrations hasn't evolved).

My favorite thing right now is that a room can have multiple devices (e.g. screens, speakers, etc) but timers don't belong to a room, they belong to an individual Home device, so your screens don't show your timers if your speaker "eats" them. Makes zero sense. Been like that for over a year.

In general Google as an organization is going downhill fast. Google Search is legitimately bad now, I turn on Verbatim Mode and quote everything just to get a so-so experience (still mostly spam though).

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Just casually wondering here... how do you evaluate the voice assistants to claim that Alexa is improving, Google Assistant is getting worse and Siri is terrible? I used all three and honestly I don't feel a whole lot of difference between them. They all control the lights and set the timers/alarms just alright, with similar "error rates".

In my experience they are only good for settings timers/alarms, that's it (though I believe can be good for controlling lights as well).

Few years ago I was in indonesia, Bali and asked google 'navigate to ubud' and it showed me how to navigate to some cities in USA. Same with translation when you want to have simple conversation with locals - each time ends up with embarrassment.

I trashed all my Alexas the moment they started interjecting advertisements.

"Alexa, play soothing lullaby music"

"Sure, and don't forget that next week is prime week. Get great deals on all your favorite items....."

I wonder if my pi-hole is blocking that. I’ve never heard anything like that, and we have them all over the house in use every dat.

I threw all my google home devices into the recycling bin a year ago. They had become comically bad. The only thing I haven't replaced are the nest thermostats but I'd like to get rid of them as well.

> Siri is statically-terrible

I don’t think it’s a fair assessment. Sure it’s the worst out of the 3 but it’s improving, albeit at the speed of 0.3 microgoogles.

I thought calling it "statically-terrible" was unfair because Siri is getting much worse. Yesterday I discovered that asking it to play "Bring the Noise by Public Enemy" plays a dreadful Benny Benassi remix, even if you specifically ask for the album version. Apple's last big keynote led with some marketing of a voice only plan for Apple Music, and yet Apple Music / Siri has no concept of the canonical version of a song.

My favourite though is asking it to "play Richard the third by Supergrass", Siri responds that it can't find that song on Apple Music, so you ask it to "play Richard eye eye eye by Supergrass" and Siri responds "Now playing Richard the third by Supergrass".

I'm with you. I bought a Homepod and thought I would make use of Siri for timers, to-do items, grocery lists, and other similar tasks in addition to music. However, Siri is so comically useless for music that I don't even bother. It's significantly faster to just pull the song/album up on my phone and tell it to play on the Homepod.

The only things I use Siri for now is to add ONE item to the grocery or set a timer. The timers are useful in the kitchen, but it's hardly worth a Homepad to set a timer.

I wish I had returned it within the return window. At least it sounds great.

Apple Music is terrible with no help from Siri. Say, I listen to Dva, the czech duo. Apparently it is the same artist as some rapper Dva. I wonder who gets the money. Don’t get me started on “various artists”. Or search.

Google Home Mini connected to YouTube Music also suffers similar problems and I swear it's ability to determine the voice commands given has gotten far worse than it was a few years ago.

For example, asking for specific albums and it will play someone's playlist of the album - in terrible quality because someone uploaded it as a video to YouTube I think part of the problem is that the music catalogue is so poorly maintained/governed on YouTube Music. For example there are many songs that state they are by Little Richard that are actually other artists' songs

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