The way Gemini (which is incredible) has been haphazardly shoved into gsuite products seems devoid of any kind of common sense. Even very basic obvious things via Gemini in Gmail fail. It’s ironic because it’s the one place I’d love a decent model.

Incredible at some things maybe, but for the average user Gemini is what broke Google Assistant (the article touches on that). Most people use Google Assistant to "do things" like play music, interact with smart switches, etc. Rolling out Gemini as a replacement before it could do these things was always going to be viewed as a regression.

People don't care if it can answer questions with more nuance when the smart stuff they paid hundreds or thousands for no longer works.

I use Assistant to add reminders or stuff to my calendar (saying "Add appointment for 22nd of December at 2pm take sleigh out of garage" is a lot faster than clicking around the calendar UI), a few months ago Gemini couldn't do these things, yesterday it offers to do so after I connect it to the Workspace apps (I'm using civilian Google). But asking it to list my reminders gives me a textual listing in its UI instead of loading the Tasks UI...

Getting a response to "Set alarm for 8am" is still a lot quicker in Assistant than in Gemini.

The weird thing is that other AI systems can route commands to different models. Google should be able to send questions to Gemini and commands to Google Assistant.

I used Google Assistant to call my wife whem I was driving.

Previously it just called her, Gemini asks which one of the numbers I have saved should it call, but not as a continued conversation. It comes up with an onscreen list, which I'm not pressing whilst driving, and trying to tell it which one ends with Gemini getting very confused.

Reverted to Google Assistant which still works and will actually call her.

Reminds me of when Google Plus got “integrated” everywhere, but even worse.

If we take the thing nobody asked for and shove it in users faces as often as possible, this will get lots of happy customers and the product will take off!

The number of random buttons in Google products that have been replaced with Gemini features to juice engagement numbers is insane.

Everything from picking an image in Slides now activating image gen to returning to your main search results now being taken up by AI Mode

You wonder if people are really clearing performance reviews off these metrics without anyone digging deeper

I blocked that with uBlock origin the moment I first saw it. So annoying! Someone should make a filter for all of these AI widgets.

We can go for a first release, together. You have these, I have about 8 things filtered out of Atlassian products.

If I remember on Monday, I'll reply with my portion. Don't own nearly enough to go near radiation on my weekend.

Change the domain (before ##) to match your instance:

    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="issue-smart-request-summary.ui.ai-container"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="issue.views.issue-base.foundation.status.improve-issue"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[aria-label="Summarize"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="atlassian-navigation.ui.conversation-assistant.app-navigation-ai-mate"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="highlight-actions.ui.popup-target.popup-dialog.action-items.define-button.define-button"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="context-menu-rovo-chat-button"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="context-menu-rovo-chat-more-options"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="atlassian-intelligence-toolbar-button"]
    your_co.atlassian.net##[data-testid*="placeholder-test-id"]

Surely some repeats/inefficiency: barely know what I'm doing :)

Clippy!

Ask Jeeves?

Oh, no wait! Google answers?

Clippy at least had the courtesy of only blocking the bottom right of the window, these ridiculous Gemini pop-ups appear next to whatever cell you have selected and block things like column headers or values that you actually want to look at while editing the formula/value. It's insane to me that this was ever allowed to get deployed without a rational human being calling out the obvious issue.