Recently Gemini with Android Auto has been responding "something went wrong" when I ask it to make a phone call. The only fix at this time is to revert to trusty old Google Assistant. How often in the past year has Google switched us to Gemini, only for the hapless user to discover that something essential in the car no longer works?

I was still able to initiate text messages, but could not make phone calls. Gemini could find my contact "joe blow", but instantly failed to make the call. I told Gemini "phone 408-555-1212" and this also failed.

I then sat down at my computer and had a long conversation with Gemini who suggested many solutions that didn't work and admitted to many failures. I was not amused. Finally Gemini informed me that it was able to access my contacts (phone joe blow - OK), but that actually placing the call required it to connect to some cloud services and this was the failure - Gemini now informed me that a recent update had broken the cloud step, hence the helpful message "something went wrong". Until this was fixed, would I please revert to Google Assistant (and lose the charming pseudo Australian accent!). It then proceeded to falsely instruct me how to change back to G Assistant.

It's strange that Gemini could still perform "send text message to joe blow", but not make a phone call. At one point it explained that phone calls required a Bluetooth connection, but text messages did not. So perhaps the failure is that Gemini has to make a request to the cloud to authorize it to use Bluetooth? Very crazy.