> Is it? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking)

Absolutely it is. In general, my Siri usage is limited to opening Google Assistant, that's how bad it is. Also, "Hey Google" works as a command on most devices.

I'm pretty sure you can say "Hey Google" as well.

"Hey [huge corporation here]" is not a great user experience for a device meant to be at home.

It's exceptionally good in my experience in English. It helps when you train it on your voice. Also, it wants me to say "hey Google" these days, if you like that any better than ok Google.

I'm with you. I was severely unimpressed - I can't say "go to sleep in a half hour," but must say "go to sleep in 30 minutes." If I accidentally say "go to bed" I've got to start up a whole new "Hey Google" cycle again.

At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

> At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

Do you really though?

Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini...

And while Google responded quickly:

Google just permanently killed the feature that made some Home Minis eavesdrop https://www.the-ambient.com/news/google-home-mini-spy-proble...

who is to say what the next update brings?

Let's keep some perspective here. By "eavesdropping", you mean a small handful (~4000 devices) of first gen devices that were never sold to actual customers with defective touch sensors causing the recording to be activated.

The software fix pushed out simply disables the "push-to-talk" feature entirely.

Unless you think Google has some kind of motive to listen to completely randomly-triggered recording (and they don't; the data would be garbage from almost any standpoint I can imagine), your post is incredibly misleading at best and malicious fearmongering at worst.

Can't you say Hey Google now?

No in French, from what I can tell. (Pronounced the same)