Apparently, Google Assistant is going away. That may not matter to some people. I'll say this, it matters a great deal to me. I'm still using Google Assistant, and I did not switch to Gemini. When Google Assistant goes away on September 4th, it will affect me directly.

Sure, I tried Gemini before. I switched to Gemini for brief periods, then try to get it to do the things that I use Google Assistant for. Hey Google, what's the date? Gemini gets it wrong. The big thing for me though is the routines. I use Google Assistant to run the routines, and it runs them quite well. At first, Gemini couldn't run routines at all. Now it can, but it still doesn't run them as well as Google Assistant does.

In Android, if you open the Google Home app, then click "Automations", there's all your Google Assistant routines. My actions for my "Good Morning" routine start like this:

Play a delightful chime

Tell me today's date

Tell me a random joke

Announce "Will it rain today?"

Will it rain today?

It does quite a few other things, but I'll leave those be for now.

With Google Assistant, run this good morning routine, and it does each one of these things dutifully. It plays a chime. It tells you the date. It tells you a joke. Perfect.

Switch to Gemini and try to run the routine. It "runs" only in a superficial sense. Most of the things configured in the Google Assistant routines it just can't do. When I tried it just now, it told me the weather and it told me my tasks for today. That's it. Like 2 of the 21 actions I have configured. That's why I'm not too happy about Google Assistant being retired. If I want an AI bot, I have plenty of others to choose from. I don't want or need Gemini. Google Assistant, however, is useful because it can run these routines. Since Google Assistant is going away, and Gemini can't do the only thing I would ever want to do with it, then for me, Google Assistant is being retired in favor of nothing. I'm not likely to use Gemini, not unless it can run my Google Assistant routines the way that Google Assistant can.

I'll go on a limb and say that's not likely to happen. The only thing that can run Google Assistant routines correctly is Google Assistant. That's just how things roll, isn't it? They give you something good, you start depending on it, and before you know it, the good thing is taken away.

Naturally those up in the ranks at Google are likely thinking that Gemini is so much better than Google Assistant. It can do so many more things. It has so much better responses. So on, and so forth. The first time I tried Gemini, I just asked it what the date was. That's a somewhat common query I would give to Google Assistant. If you ask Google Assistant about the date, it gives you the correct date every time. When I asked Gemini what the date was, it fabricates whatever date. You'll never know if the date it gives you is the right one or not.

Is it really that much trouble to keep Google Assistant working? What about people like me who are depending on it? What about our Google Assistant routines? Maybe I'll complain less if Gemini could actually run them correctly, but it can't. Maybe if Gemini could actually give me the correct date reliably.

If I want an answer from an AI service, the one I usually reach for is Perplexity. Mainly, I like their app. There's a section in it where you can talk to the AI bot with your voice and it will speak the results to you. True conversational style. Well, maybe Gemini does that by default, whatever. I'm still probably not going to start using it any time soon. Call me stuck in my ways, or whatever.

There's still another month left of Google Assistant service. Guess I should enjoy my good morning routine while I can. Soon it will be a thing of the past. It just goes to show you, if you like something, keep it locally if you can. See a video on YouTube you like? Try to save a copy of it. There's no guarantee that the thing you like on YouTube will stay there forever. Things can disappear on you, just like that, just like the poor Google Assistant service.

Now's the time to break out the little violin. I'll play a sad song in memory of Google Assistant. Yeah, I know it's not dead just yet, but now that its days are numbered, the sadness can already start. let's go with the processions. Prepare the eulogy. Write the epitaph.

Am I being overly dramatic for the Google Assistant service? Sure, but, it's also a dramatic thing to take down a service that many people are depending on. It's not like Google put it to a vote. Or did they? Was there a vote about Google Assistant that I missed? If I were part of it, I would have voted to keep Google Assistant going for a while. Actually, there probably wasn't a vote at all. More likely it was just about the numbers on a spreadsheet. Numbers that say, this is how much it costs to run Google Assistant, this is how many queries it gets each month, and this is how much money we make from it. If only Google Assistant could have better numbers then. Maybe if we all banded together, started asking Google Assistant for everything from the kitchen sink to sliced bread, Google would change their minds and decide to keep the Assistant going. I can dream.