It’s hard for Google to claim that they’re focusing resources (e.g. dev time), given the list of features being removed. As one of the HN comments said, quite a few of them “seem to fall under the umbrella of “features that actually make the assistant an assistant”/connecting the assistant to other apps”. In other words, integration - that’s core functionality for an assistant and they likely know it.
I would define the core capability as “takes audio, extracts meaning, matches to intent, executes intent”. Everything else is an implementation of a specific intent/action. Some of them are likely fragile and depend on integration APIs that may be changing or going away.
Ultimately, yes, it is corporate-speak to sugarcoat what looks like a net negative for users at the current time with nebulous claims of a better future.
It’s hard for Google to claim that they’re focusing resources (e.g. dev time), given the list of features being removed. As one of the HN comments said, quite a few of them “seem to fall under the umbrella of “features that actually make the assistant an assistant”/connecting the assistant to other apps”. In other words, integration - that’s core functionality for an assistant and they likely know it.
I would define the core capability as “takes audio, extracts meaning, matches to intent, executes intent”. Everything else is an implementation of a specific intent/action. Some of them are likely fragile and depend on integration APIs that may be changing or going away.
Ultimately, yes, it is corporate-speak to sugarcoat what looks like a net negative for users at the current time with nebulous claims of a better future.
Let’s not forget they terminated A LOT of the Assistant developers within the last week.