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Indeed. These recent AI demos are pretty damn impressive (even knowing there are smoke and mirrors), but it's hard to get excited about what's happening with their R&D when my Google Home device seems to be regressing on a daily basis. It is now basically is only useful for alarms and timers.

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Perhaps OT but I see often these comments on HN. How do these devices (I don't own one) lose functionality over time? Features removed through updates?

Yes.

The home assistant speakers aren’t making enough money to justify the large teams behind them. Thus we’ve seen significant layoffs on those teams in the past year.

BigCos are looking for other ways to reduce costs. Killing features is one way to do it.

There have also been situations where a feature is removed because of legal action; lawsuits alleging the features violates a patent.

Live updates givith, live updates taketh away!

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