17 features Google Assistant is losing in 2024 (and why)

Google Assistant, the general voice assistant accessible through Android phones, Nest Audio and Hub devices, and Google’s own apps, is losing some features come Jan. 26. Google announced that Google Assistant will no longer be capable of 17 previously available skills, as part of a broader reorganization and refocus around what customers are currently using Assistant for and, it seems, what artificial intelligence projects the company wants to highlight going forward.

“We’re prioritizing the experiences you love and investing in the underlying technology to make them even better,” explains the company’s vice president of Google Assistant, Duke Dukellis, “which means that some underutilized features will no longer be supported.” Even with that in mind, there still doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to what skills are being removed. Google’s published list of what will no longer be available covers everything from playing audiobooks with your voice to sending emails, features that seem like they might be used semi-regularly by Assistant users.

What are the skills that Google Assistant is losing?

Google has a complete and more detailed explanation available on its support page, including suggestions for alternatives you could use in place of the missing skills, but here’s what will no longer be available after Jan. 26:

• Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice
• Setting or using media alarms, music alarms, or radio alarms on Google Assistant enabled devices (third-party speakers with Assistant, for example)
• Accessing or managing your cookbook, transferring recipes from device to device, playing an instructional recipe video, or showing step-by-step recipes
• Managing a stopwatch on smart displays and speakers
• Using your voice to call a device or broadcast a message to your Google Family Group
• Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message
• Rescheduling an event in Google Calendar with your voice
• Using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media
• Asking to schedule or hear previously scheduled Family Bell announcements
• Asking to meditate with Calm
• Voice control for activities will no longer be available on Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 devices
• Viewing your sleep summaries will only be available on Google smart displays
• Calls made from speakers and smart displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo
• Viewing the ambient “Commute to Work” time estimates on smart displays
• Checking personal travel itineraries by voice
• Asking for information about your contacts
• Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as send a payment, make a reservation, or post to social media

Is anything else changing about Google Assistant?

Besides removing skills, Google is also changing how Google Assistant behaves on Android devices and in the Google app. Voice requests made by pressing the “microphone” icon in the Google app will now only trigger search results, which Google claims is the most popular use for the button anyway. Google Assistant will still be able to be summoned with a “Hey Google” or a long press on the home or power button on Android phones, though, or via the Google Assistant app on iOS. That updated “microphone” button behavior extends to the Pixel Search bar on Pixel phones as well. Now it will only produce search results when you make a request.

Why is Google Assistant actually losing skills?

Officially, Google is meeting the demand of its users, eliminating the things that weren’t being used much in the first place. If there’s anyone who’d know what the high-traffic abilities of Google Assistant are, it would be Google. But recent events at the search giant do suggest that there are larger changes happening to what AI products Google is focusing on that could have left Google Assistant and the team that makes it in the lurch.

Bard, Gemini, and generative AI

For one thing, there’s the current obsession with generative artificial intelligence that’s sweeping through the tech industry at the moment. When Microsoft morphed it’s Bing search engine into an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s large language models, Google was caught off guard. The Bing chatbot (now called Copilot) brought a generative AI experience to the masses for free, and regardless of how useful it is, it sold the potential of directly interfacing with an AI. Google’s Bard experiment, while capable of many of the same things, arrived late, and without that initial wow factor.

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Gemini Ultra, Pro, and Nano, the new AI models Google debuted late last year, were supposed to be proof that the company could keep up with, and even surpass, Microsoft and OpenAI, but it’s not yet clear that they’ve made a meaningful difference in how Bard works or how the Pixel is supposed handles AI tasks. It’s very possible Google is more interested in the flexibility of an AI system that can generate natural and bespoke text and image responses for users rather than the more limited skills that Google Assistant provides. Even if Google Assistant can technically do more, it doesn’t feel as “intelligent” as something that approximates casual human speech. Assistant with Bard — the new version of Google Assistant with the broader abilities and natural language skills of Bard — might be the best evidence of this. It feels like where Google wants to take things next.

Layoffs and budget cuts

Another possible reason why Google Assistant seems like it’s getting deprioritized is that Google’s been planning to make cuts to the teams that work on it. Semafor, The New York Times, and 9to5Google report that Google is cutting hundreds of jobs in January across its first-party hardware (Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit), Google Assistant, and engineering divisions. Google made an even larger cut to its workforce in 2023, laying off 12,000 employees, but regardless of the size, these kinds of dramatic reorganizations always have an impact. Today’s changes to Google Assistant aren’t the result, but taken together they may reflect how Google is thinking about its voice assistant going forward.