Google Ruins the Assistant's Shopping List, Turns It Into a Big Google Express Ad (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Google Assistant, Google's voice assistant that powers the Google app on Android phones, tablets, and Google Home, has just gotten a major downgrade. In a move reminiscent of all the forced and user-hostile Google+ integrations, Google has gutted the Google Assistant's shopping list functionality in order to turn it into a big advertisement for Google's shopping site, Google Express. The shopping list has been a major feature of the Google Assistant. You can say "Add milk to my shopping list," and the Google Assistant would dutifully store this information somewhere. The shopping list used to live in Google Keep. Keep is Google's primary note-taking app, making it a natural home for the shopping list with lots of useful tools and management options. Now the shopping list lives in Google Express. Express is an online shopping site, and it has no business becoming a dedicated place to store a shopping list that probably has nothing to do with Google's online marketplace. Since Google Express is an online shopping site (and, again, has no business having a note-taking app grafted onto it), the move from Keep to Google Express means the Assistant's shopping list functionality loses the following features: Being able to reorder items with drag and drop; Reminders; Adding images to the shopping list; Adding voice recordings to the shopping list; Real time collaboration with other users (Express has sharing, but you can't see other people as they type -- you have to refresh.); Android Wear integration; Desktop keyboard shortcuts; Checkbox management: deleting all checked items, unchecking all items, hiding checkboxes. Alternatively, the move from Keep to Google Express means the Assistant shopping list gains the following features: Google Express advertising next to every list item; Google Express advertising at the bottom of the page.

Comments

Advert company makes product that delivers adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11

Terrible

[110010001000]

This is terrible news for the two people that use this service.

PLEASE Understand

[sit1963nz]

YOU are the product being sold. YOU are NOT a customer, you are a data source that Google on sells. EVERYTHING Google does is on the basis that they need more advert impressions and click throughs. The only thing that surprises me is that this was not done sooner.

It's Been Getting Worse

[Thelasko]

Google Now/ Google Assistant or whatever they are calling it has been getting worse for a while now. It used to tell me about my commute. Not anymore. It used to tell me the weather on the home screen. Now I have to search for "weather". I should seriously just delete the thing.

Google is not your fucking friend

[Orgasmatron]

Stop getting upset when they remind you.

What made you think it would last

[SuperKendall]

What about Google's changes over the last five-ten years gave you any reason to think anything you liked from Google would stay as you liked it?

I think it is absolute madness to rely, or even get used to the continence of, any Google services.

I myself am guilty of breaking this rule in one huge way - I still use Waze. I know my own day of sorrow is coming. I just don't see how I can act surprised or upset when it arrives.

They never learn

[qvatch]

Sorry, were you relying on a google product again?

Google has too many redundant projects

[MobyDisk]

Google and Microsoft both have the problem that they have multiple nearly identical services within one company. They periodically retire one service and add another, inevitably losing or breaking some feature. Just recently, my phone lost what I think was "Google Assistant" and now it uses "Google Home" - which is the same thing with fewer features. For example, it used to work from any screen so I could tell it "OK Google, dial {phone number I see on the screen}" or "OK Google, search for {thing I see on screen}" It also can't identify songs. It even has a special message where it tells me that feature isn't supported yet. That was a strange response since that was the first indication I had that the program I was using had been replaced.

Re:Google has too many redundant projects

[DickBreath]

Google should follow Trump's lead. For every service Google repeals, it should add two new services that replace it. With overlapping functionality, but with neither one having quite everything that you want.

Suggestion: Alternative technology

[Alain Williams]

Piece of paper held onto the fridge with a magnet.

Works for me.

Re:Suggestion: Alternative technology

[hawguy]

Piece of paper held onto the fridge with a magnet.

Works for me.

I used to use that piece of paper once.... problem is that it never left the 'fridge, so when I went to the store, I'd have to try to guess what I wrote on the list.

Now I use Google Keep and share the shopping list with my spouse, so either one of us can edit the list, and when either of us goes to the store we have access to it.

Re:Suggestion: Alternative technology

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great!

Unfortunately I can't add items to that while I'm at work.

Also can't read it from the shop if it's stuck to the fridge.

Also my other half can't add items to it, or see it at the same time and buy stuff off it and mark them as bought.

Also.... etc.

(And basically you just mean "Carry a notebook and pen everywhere", which seems a little silly in the age of the smartphone).

Google is for search and gmail.

[CptLoRes]

Everything else that is Google I don't touch. Exactly because of stuff like this. So as long as they don't mess with gmail, frankly I don't care.

My brain switched off half way through the summary

[blackpaw]

And for once, not a fault of the editors - that is a truly ridiculous collection of buzzwords and "services", but they seem necessary.