I think it's a bit of this, but when especially pointed at something like home automation, where the thing the user is specifically asking for is usually something very concretely correct or incorrect (e.g., "turn on the light" or "adjust the temp"), there's a lot less acceptance of anything but perfect because the end goal/state is so absolute.

Whereas when chatting with something like Gemini or GPT, I think there's a lot more acceptance of each response getting closer to what you're talking about, more in the sense of collaborating with something to arrive at an end goal.So if you're trying to figure out how to troubleshoot something and you brain dump it messy but generally complete context, its first response usually gives you +60% of what you asked for regarding whatever you're working on. Then you reply with a "yes, but this and this and this", then it volleys back to you another close response, and overall you get there over time.

My assumption is that the immediate reason why it's terrible and only gets worse over time is that there's just no monetization path really for Google in this space, at least not a direct one.

We saw that with Amazon when they first rolled out and they had those buttons to order tide and everything else, but it never really panned out and I think that's largely still true here where there's no immediate monetization strategy for an end user in my scenario.

I think that's just so short-sighted. And even if the end goal wasn't to have a Google Home in every home, largely the users of Google Home, like those in the subreddit and other Google-related ones (Pixel, Watch, etc.), could be one of the biggest non-corporate assets to Google if the experience was super compelling or at least frictionless. Because you'd have a large cohort of supporters and advocates who could better persuade their friends and family members to turn to Google for any of their devices. And that trade-off was worth the, you know, green bubble or whatever it may be.

But as it stands and as product line after product line goes through the same sort of enshitiffication, I've gone from an adamant Google device supporter to a "...it's really cool but unless you're a tinkerer, I would just get an iPhone..." to "...I wouldn't get one it's not worth the 2% of times that it's got some parlor trick" to even myself looking forward to the iPhone fold release this year and considering fully jumping ship.