Dear Google, Fix Google Home. Now.

I've lived in a Google Home Power Department for years, and it's become an absolute nightmare

Why? Why is this happening? Why? Because Google, for everyone who's wanted a smart home

Amazon, Google, and Apple gave us regular people a glimpse of what it's supposed to be like

Just call out to your assistant and tell it something you need. I will not use any trigger

words for your speakers, or so I hope. You yell out, assistant, set a timer for 30 minutes

or assistant, turn on the living room lights, or random questions like, assistant, what's the

national capital of Australia. Oh, and if you know that one, let me know in the comments. A lot of

people get this wrong, by the way. Hint, it's not Sydney. Google Home is almost 10 years old. It

turns 10 in November, 2026. We're supposed to be having flying cars, but I'm here yelling at a

plastic puck because its brain has turned to goo. Somehow Google Home went from reliable to more

reliable, to more powerful, to one of the most frustrating pieces of technology I own in my home

It's not just me, by the way. This isn't some kind of wonderful World of IAZ special

Oh no, this is affecting lots of us. Head to the Google Home subreddit. What was once a thriving

place for automation discussions or seeing how you could push home to do awesome things

is now ridden with complaints. We'll get to some of those complaints. But what the Fitbit happened

Well, Google went full Google on this, leading to a big, ugly mess. Here's how things were

Google introduced its smart speaker after Amazon introduced its line of smart speakers

Amazon got people comfortable with the idea that a speaker in your home that listened to whatever you say is a good idea

With skills, Amazon's offering got smarter, which allowed it to interact with other smartphone devices

Two years later, Google's all, wait, we have a voice thingy called Google Assistant

Let's get people used to talking to us Think of how good it would be for them to have the world's information just by asking

We'd also collect data, but shh So like a nerd, I bought both for my home to see which was better

Amazon was great for putting things in my shopping cart, setting timers, and playing an interactive version of Jeopardy, which I enjoyed

Google Home, on the other hand, could answer strange questions, set timers and had access to my Google Calendar for all kinds of helpful information So far so good After using both for a while I found Google Home to be a better fit for me Why The Amazon Echo was super impatient Let

say I wanted to know the weather for the weekend. Hey, speaker, what's the weather for the

The weather's going to be fine. For the weekend, just wait for me. Just wait, okay? I wasn't done

with my question. Gosh, my smart speaker's impatient. What a cruel reality. Nothing will

ever be worse than this. Well, Google was more forgiving. I could pause and it would wait for me

to finish before answering me. If these two assistants were people, I would have to give

the Amazon one a decaf coffee or a tranquilizer. Slow down. Just slow down. Google, you get the

good parking space. Then it got bad. Unnecessarily bad. Occasionally, I would have to disconnect and

then reconnect my Google Home account with my smart lights or a third party app. Okay, that

happens. Nothing's perfect. Then it got worse. I'd ask Google to play music on a speaker group and

and I'd wait and wait, nothing. Try the command again, nothing. Okay, how about I rename the group

Will that help? It worked, but was that the real fix or did I just get lucky with time

This would happen over and over again. Well, nothing's perfect. By the way, whole home audio is really fun

There's nothing like blasting oldies like Madonna's Material Girl while you're cleaning or something

Yes, it's an oldie, older audience. It's from 1985. That's 20 years before iShowSpeed was born

So I went to the Google Home subreddit and found some workarounds. Create automation so Google understands my commands

So there I go, creating automations with easy to remember code names like Sanders

meant to toggle the living room lights because I was watching a KFC ad

when I made the automation. Then Google got assistant happy. It was on everything, including the Pixel Watch

Cool, let me try that too. Guess what? The Google Assistant on the Pixel Watch

did not support automations at first. Let me get this straight. I created an automation with a Google app

for Google hardware. Then I use other Google hardware to invoke a command

and the watch says, it can't do it. Assistant was inconsistent. Fine, nothing is perfect

And then Gemini arrived. This is Google's super smart AI assistant. It could understand what you said

but what more it could understand what you meant You could fix your questions mid question and Gemini would handle it Super This is when Google Home started becoming a mess Those issues I mentioned disconnection

stalling, they just got worse and more frequent. Let's go to that subreddit to see the kinds of

issues people are having. Here's the monthly complaints and rants mega thread for March

2026. At the top, sorry, I don't understand from all four of my devices. It's incapable of anything

I'm going to destroy these and replace them next chance I get. Not with Google Homes for sure

One person said they told Google to turn off the light and set the TV to HDMI 2

Lights does nothing, TV does nothing, and the Nest Hub starts reading out a description of what

HDMI 2.0 is. It used to work. Why does it just get dumber? Another person, I can't set timers in

the kitchen, can't change music tracks on any devices, can't change the volume of the music

or speaker voice. It's become mostly useless at the current state. What is this? I've had similar

issues at home. Here's why there's rage around Google Assistant. Google Assistant used to work

like it did the things Google said it would do. Then Google improved its voice assistant

technology, which can be very useful for searches and things, but makes a terrible assistant

So how does Google handle this seething anger? Let's look at the latest release notes for Google

Home. There's a note about responsiveness and accuracy. Smart home latency. Your most common

smart home commands are now faster. Everyday commands like turn on the lights should see

latency improvements up to 40%. There's also an alarm and timer improvement. For example, ask

What was the original time of my timer and how much time is left? It's been nearly 10 years, Google

10 years. Now we're getting faster commands. Now we're getting latency improvements

But I, as they're making improvements, you just talked about the release notes. True

That's true, all right. And if you think the software's a mess, wait until you look at the hardware

It's like Google doesn't even know what to call the things they're selling us

In 2016, we got the Google Home Speaker. It looked like an air freshener. There it is. Four years later we get a second generation speaker This time it called Google Nest Audio That right Google rebranded its smart home devices since it bought Nest That makes things very clear to people right You want the second generation Google Home speaker

It's called Nest Audio now. Deal with it. The Home Mini came out in 2017

The Google Nest Mini 2019. All right. Smaller, cheaper Google speakers. That's fantastic

Okay. It also seems like Google is dropping the Google Home thing other than for apps, I guess

Oh, and Google is releasing a new speaker in the spring of 2026

Is it called the Nest Audio 2? No, of course not. It's called the Google Home Speaker

If you got this far, you're as big a nerd as I am. Google confuses us with its ridiculous branding

Could you imagine what it does to the normal people? Anyone remember the Google Chromecast with Google TV

What kind of name is that? What is that? Why is that? Then there was Google's reputation

for killing products and features. Check out killedbygoogle.com. The big Google Home speaker, the Max, lasted three years

Google Stadia, Google's attempt at cloud gaming, arrived with a lot of hoopla

Google's cloud gaming solution would let you play games on any internet-connected device

All the work would be done in the cloud, and you wouldn't need to have a super powerful computer to play them

Great idea! Then it's dead after four years. Older nerds, do you remember the Nexus Q, the spherical media player

Project Aura, a modular phone concept? All dead ends. Right now, Google Home is an absolute nightmare

And worst of all, Google had a working model and then messed it up

Nerds like us are the people others come to for recommendations. And Google consistently gets in its own way

If someone was starting a smart home today, I don't know if I would recommend

Google's platform right now. If Google's promised fixes, let's see them work

Google, listen to me. Breaking things for the people who took a chance on your new products

makes us a lot less likely to tell people, hey, get a Google Home solution, it'll work

I don't dislike Google stuff, by the way. I enjoy a lot of the company's products, but Google's flaky, man

I know you've got a favorite dead Google product. Mine was Google Reader

What's yours? Tell me in the comments, or you can email me, feedback at PCMag.com

Talk to me on the subway if you want. Just identify yourself first. I'm Iaz Akhtar, and I'll see you online