Google Home Fails at Things It Once Could Do, and Google Admits It
•February 17, 2026
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Why It Matters
Degraded reliability erodes consumer confidence in Google’s smart‑home platform and may drive users toward competing voice assistants, threatening Google’s market share in the fast‑growing IoT space.
Key Takeaways
- •Google Home reliability dropping across multiple commands.
- •Reddit users report over ten feedback submissions daily.
- •Google acknowledges two disjointed assistant systems.
- •CPO promised long‑term solution, fall update delayed.
- •Issues persist regardless of Gemini upgrade status.
Pulse Analysis
The recent wave of complaints about Google Home underscores a broader challenge for voice‑assistant manufacturers: maintaining consistent performance as ecosystems grow more complex. Users now encounter basic failures—such as inaccurate responses to store‑hours queries—that were once routine. This erosion of trust is amplified by public acknowledgment from Google support, which admitted that two separate assistant back‑ends are out of sync. When a flagship product falters, it not only dents brand perception but also raises questions about the scalability of Google’s AI roadmap.
Competitors like Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri have capitalized on reliability as a differentiator, offering smoother integrations with third‑party devices and more predictable updates. In a market where households increasingly rely on voice control for lighting, security, and entertainment, any dip in accuracy can push consumers toward alternatives that promise steadier performance. The Google Home setbacks also highlight the risk of fragmented development—introducing Gemini while legacy systems remain active can create hidden incompatibilities that surface as user‑visible glitches.
Looking ahead, Google’s promise of a long‑term solution suggests a potential architectural overhaul, possibly consolidating the dual‑system architecture into a unified AI stack. Until a concrete fix arrives, businesses building on Google’s smart‑home APIs may need to hedge their strategies, incorporating fallback mechanisms or multi‑assistant support. For end users, the key takeaway is vigilance: monitoring firmware updates and providing feedback remains essential, but the onus now lies with Google to restore reliability and reaffirm its leadership in the voice‑assistant arena.
Google Home fails at things it once could do, and Google admits it
By Joe Fedewa
Published Feb 17 2026, 2:07 PM EST
Credit: Joe Fedewa / How‑To Geek
Joe Fedewa has been writing about technology for over a decade. Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem have been a focus for years, as well as reviewing devices, hosting podcasts, filming videos, and writing tutorials.
Google Home smart speakers used to be the clear‑cut winners in the virtual‑assistant device category. However, if you’ve been using Nest smart‑home devices recently, you’ve probably noticed a significant drop in quality. This has been happening to a lot of people for a long time, and the company knows it.
Over in the Google Home subreddit, there have been many complaints about Nest smart devices failing at things they used to be able to do easily. This isn’t only a Gemini problem, either. It’s been happening with Google Assistant, too. One particularly frustrated Redditor has been sending “at least 10 feedbacks” every time it fails a command, and Google finally responded (Reddit thread).
A Google support agent acknowledged that the voice assistants aren’t working for many people, regardless of whether they upgraded to Gemini. They also admitted it’s been months without a solution, but there will be a fix eventually. The Redditor did not provide a full transcript of the conversation, but they said the agent “made it seem like there’s now 2 different systems behind the scenes and they’re not working together.”
Now, this is all based on a Redditor’s word, but it matches Google’s previous comments on this issue. Last July, the chief product officer for Google Home, Anish Kattukaran, acknowledged that they were receiving feedback about “Google Assistant reliability” on smart‑home devices. He said they were working on a “long‑term solution,” and there would be more to share in the fall. Several Google Home updates arrived late last year, but these “reliability” problems haven’t gone away.
Personally, I use Google Home smart speakers every day, and I can firmly attest to the fact that they’ve gotten worse. I recently asked when a nearby store opens—something I’ve done countless times in the past—and Google Assistant simply would not do it. Before I could even complete the sentence, “Hey Google, what time does Kohl’s open?”, Assistant would interrupt and tell me the current time.
That’s just one example among plenty of other times where it’s utterly failed at simple commands it used to handle. As mentioned, this doesn’t only happen with Gemini—I haven’t upgraded, and I’m still getting a worse experience. The company has been aware of these problems for months, and we still don’t have a clear answer on when a fix will come.
We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update this post if they respond.
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