Why I abandoned Gemini and returned to Google Assistant for my daily routines

We live in a world packed full of AI, and it's becoming almost impossible to avoid using it.

I've let myself use it more and more in the last few months, and I've had mixed results.

For all Google's boasts, Gemini still feels like a toy, and while it's enjoyable in some contexts, it's just bad in others.

Which might be why, now that Gemini is knocking on the door of every part of my Android experience, I've purposefully decided to go back in time. I've returned to using Google Assistant, and here's why.

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By  Mark Jansen

Sometimes a task needs doing, not thinking about

I'm prone to procrastinating.

Starting tasks is hard. Chopping it up into smaller chunks helps a lot, but I still struggle with it from time to time. And every now and again, I've got nothing on Gemini.

Gemini loves to think. Ask it a question, and it'll spend the next thirty seconds or so umming and ahhing, going over the alternatives, and eventually delivering you an answer.

Still, it's not really thinking — it's checking a database and running probability mathematics.

But the outcome is the same. It takes too long for Gemini to get to the end of its train of thought. All the while, I'm waiting for it and getting more and more annoyed.

To make things worse, Gemini is so chatty. It loves to talk, and it'll waffle on about something that's, realistically, only tangentially related to what I've asked it.

Gemini will happily go on and on about the history of light switches, after it's taken its sweet time gathering that information.

I'm happy for you, Gem, but what I actually need is someone to turn the lights on.

Google Assistant just does it. And most of the time, that's all I want.

It's hard to trust Gemini

I can't deny that Gemini is a useful piece of technology.

For some tasks, it's hard to beat it or any of its loquacious kin.

Sometimes, when you need an answer, being able to quickly ask a chatbot out loud is a very useful tool, and I appreciate that.

But how much can I really, actually trust Gemini?

I was on a long drive this weekend, and I knew I needed a rest stop within the next half an hour or so.

I knew roughly where one was, but I wanted to make sure I didn't overshoot it.

So I booted up Gemini through Android Auto and asked it how far away it was.

The answer came in, and it was about what I expected. And then Gemini asked me if I wanted to add it as my next stop in my Google Maps navigation.

I paused. It would make sure I wouldn't miss it. But something stopped me from confirming. It was a niggling doubt.

I realized at that moment that I don't trust Gemini all that much.

It's not because I thought it might be lying to me. No, it was because I didn't know whether the well-known chain restaurant I'd asked it to find was the correct one.

After all, it might have decided to take me into some nearby town center to one there, and not the one on my route. I was close enough to a town for that to be the case, and because I was driving, I couldn't check to be sure it was right.

So I told it, "No, I'd find it myself." Gemini didn't comment, but if it had been a human, I wondered if it would have noticed my hesitance. My clear and obvious lack of trust in it.

In fairness to Gemini, it can do this, and Google Assistant can't.

Gemini can take my request, cross-reference it with the information on the map, my GPS location, and the traffic on the road, and make a judgment on how long it'll take me to get there.

Google Assistant just can't do that. It can read out web pages, but it's pretty bad at it, so most people don't use it at all.

But is it better to have a feature and not trust it, or just not have the feature at all?

I'm starting to think I'd be happier without bad or faulty options.

Gemini isn't really a replacement for Google Assistant

Recent months have shown that Google intends to replace Google Search with a Gemini-powered AI search function.

There are many problems with that, which I won't get into here, but I will say it shows exactly where Google's head was at when it was designing Gemini.

When you see Gemini as a Google Search replacement, rather than a Google Assistant successor, it makes a lot more sense.

It's why it lacks a number of the abilities Google Assistant has, like native support for Routines, and being able to directly control other devices.

That's a big part of why I'm switching back to Google Assistant for some of my devices, like my remaining Google Nest speakers.

While Google Assistant may not be able to hold a conversation or give me a long answer about what the different types of spring are, it can actually do what I want it to.

Google Assistant is the better option if you want a voice assistant that can do stuff. Because while it may have a more limited toolset, it actually knows how to use them. That makes a huge difference.