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Google is winning on every AI front

(www.thealgorithmicbridge.com)
993 points vinhnx | 8 comments | 12 Apr 25 03:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.473s | source | bottom
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remoquete ◴[12 Apr 25 06:01 UTC] No.43661748[source]▶
I was a loyal Claude user until I decided to try Gemini 2.5. "After all", I thought, "I already use a Pixel phone, so it's integrated with Android. And with Google Drive. And I can get it through my Google One subscription."

And now that I'm on it, I don't think I'm going back. Google did it again.

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firecall ◴[12 Apr 25 06:11 UTC] No.43661798[source]▶
Just to add, I am mainly an iPhone user. But I have a Google Pixel 6a for dev and testing reasons.

And Google Gemini for the voice assistant is excellent fun!

Just being able to ask it weird and wonderful whilst on a road trip with the kids is worth the cost of a cheap Pixel phone alone!

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jofzar ◴[12 Apr 25 07:01 UTC] No.43662030[source]▶
I have to seriously disagree on it for the "assistant" part. It is so terrible vs Google assistant.

There have been two really bad experiences that I had which boggled my mind.

These are transcribed because these were so bad I took a screenshot.

Example 1: "set an alarm for 15 minutes"

> Gemini sets the alarm for 1:15pm

"I want that to be 50 minutes"

> "you can change the duration of alarms in the clock app"

Example 2:

"what the temperature today"

> It is currently 5 degrees Celsius

- It was October in Sydney, the temperature was 22c with a low of 12c.....

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1. gundmc ◴[12 Apr 25 07:41 UTC] No.43662251[source]▶
> October in Sydney

These sound like fairly dated anecdotes. I don't doubt them at all - I had similar horror stories. I disabled Gemini on my phone in order to keep the old assistant for a long time, but it really has gotten a lot better in the last few months.

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2. jofzar ◴[12 Apr 25 07:45 UTC] No.43662272[source]▶
March 11th was when the alarm one was From, these are just ones that I have screenshot because they were so bad I shared with a friend.

https://imgur.com/a/nj4newx

Edit: I just asked it for the weather this week and it only showed today. Like this is Amateur hour stuff, Siri 1.0 stuff.

https://imgur.com/a/81mz98Y

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3. gundmc ◴[12 Apr 25 08:03 UTC] No.43662378[source]▶
I can replicate your weather one! I think it's taking "this week" extremely literally and the week ends on Saturday. Asking for "this weekend" gives Saturday and Sunday. Asking for the next few days gives 3 days out, etc .

Definitely not addressing the spirit of the request.

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4. jofzar ◴[12 Apr 25 08:23 UTC] No.43662480{3}[source]▶
> and the week ends on Saturday.

Except it doesn't, in literally every other country other then Japan, USA and Canada it ends on Sunday.

Edit: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/first-day-of-the-w...

I'm wrong on the countries, it's more split then I thought. Regardless it's wrong for my geo which google knows I'm in.

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5. AnonymousPlanet ◴[12 Apr 25 08:24 UTC] No.43662487{3}[source]▶
GP said they were in Sydney. As far as I know, the week officially starts on Monday in Australia. That's also the case for most of Europe, BTW. Maybe their locale wasn't set right or it's another case of American software assuming weird American standards for the rest of the world.
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6. OJFord ◴[12 Apr 25 10:37 UTC] No.43663190{4}[source]▶
I didn't know this about the USA - but it's still called 'the weekend'? (GP uses it at least) ..Even though 50% of it is apparently 'the weekstart'?
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7. cmrdporcupine ◴[12 Apr 25 16:41 UTC] No.43665956{4}[source]▶
<rant>Google is seemingly giving up on localization entirely. The whole world gets to be Yankee.

It's now started giving me F temperatures on my homescreen, for no particular reason. It knows I'm in Canada. I have set my units in the past to metric. What gives?

I still don't have Canadian English as a locale in Android or Chrome, after what, 15 years of Android? It's got words highlighted all over my page here as mis-spellings. They're not. I really did mean to type colour you piece of crap. I can switch to British but then get spanked for colourize instead of colourised etc.

And it seems to tie choice of English variant to things like pronounciation of words and accent for voice assistant. My car speaks to me in a British accent because I have it set to British English (the closest thing to my own spellings).

They never even tried to handle the facts of the (40M person) Canadian bilingual market. Navigation is either French or English, but many Canadian road sides are in both and it tries to read them out and butchers the pronounciations. Drive into Quebec and have your phone set to English and it's laughable what it does. (Notably doesn't do this for Spanish words in the US, which it seems to have no problem with).</>

8. gundmc ◴[12 Apr 25 22:42 UTC] No.43668493{5}[source]▶
Yes, the weekend is Saturday and Sunday in the United States. I guess you could consider it like "bookends", for us it's the start and end of the week.