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It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini
by cromka 4y ago
It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini speakers I use at home has become amusingly bad: not that it doesn’t understand what I want, but it will often just not execute my orders, despite understanding. For example, it recently ignores my “yes” to its “do you want to know more?” follow up questions. They keep messing it up, it used to be way better few years back.
- tjpnz 4y agoMore likely people are just going to stop using their products.
- c4mpute 4y agoI think for a lawsuit to happen there would need to be some interested law firm to organize things. For them to be interested, there would need to be money in it, that means payout times number of participants. However, since nobody except a few buys google's home automation, the number of participants is too low to result in a relevant size.
- marak830 4y agoAgainst googles lawyers? It would require a massive amount of pissed off consumers, and a huge team to even drag them to court. End result would be google paying a pittance and no one getting anything. End of the day, a lot of lawyers would be paid well and google would shrug it off as a cost of business.
- sirius87 4y agoWith all this talk of ChatGPT clearing law school exams and all, I'd love to see a legal fight of lawyers armed with AI against "googles lawyers". I believe that'd be a net good. For everyone else in tech, I suppose we can all vow to never purchase Google products as gifts for family.
- GavinMcG 4y agoClass actions don't need a huge number of people to lead the charge. That's the point: most people can do nothing, while their interests are represented. I think it would be best if wrongdoers had to make consumers whole and also pay the costs of holding them accountable. But our system currently doesn't work that way, and in that context, it's still worthwhile to have lawyers motivated to raising the cost of wrongdoing.
- akhosravian 4y agoMaybe instead of hoping for a lawsuit just stop buying shit google makes. They’ve repeatedly dropped whole product lines on short notice, and even the Android phones they have produced have sometimes had pathetically short supported lives.
- Drakim 4y agoSo you buy something else like Nest, and then google buys the company and removes your functionality anyways. That is, if vendor lock in will even allow you to get some other product without having to replace every device in your home (and hope this new vendor doesn't do the exact same within a few years). Fair consumer protection regulations are necessary in modern society, the "vote with your wallet" strategy doesn't scale.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoThe Google Play store is the chokepoint for Android. I maybe can get roughly the right functionality via an alternate app repo, but there's always going to be some mass consumer app that's important and unsupported, or some glitch or incompatibility. There ought to be law....
- hackernewds 4y agoThe old Google Mini don't even connect to the Google Home app anymore, which is necessary to chain it to Wifi connection. For a <5 year old product - that's unacceptable