Smart Home

The world of smart home technology is constantly evolving, but it seems like some smart speakers are getting worse over time. Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, two of the most popular smart speakers, have removed features that were once useful to users.

The Decline of Google Assistant

Google Assistant was once a powerful tool for smart home automation, but in recent years, it has lost some of its key features. In 2024, Google removed the ability to set alarms that play specific media, access and manage cookbooks, and use your voice to call a device or send an email.

These features were described as 'underutilized' by Google, but for those who relied on them, their removal has made the smart speaker less useful. Furthermore, Google shut down its Conversational Actions platform, which allowed users to control third-party services with their voice.

The Rise of Paywalls on Amazon Alexa

Amazon has also made changes to its Alexa smart speaker, putting some of its best features behind a paywall. One of the first features to be affected was Alexa Guard, which used to be a free service that could detect sounds like smoke alarms or breaking glass and alert users when they were away from home.

Now, some of these features are only available with the Alexa Emergency Assist subscription, making the free service less useful. Amazon has also introduced a more powerful version of Alexa called Alexa+, which can hold more natural conversations and remember personal context, but this comes at an additional cost.

An Alternative to Google and Amazon

For those looking for a better smart home experience, there are alternative options available. Home Assistant is an open-source platform that allows users to automate and control their smart home devices with ease.

With Home Assistant, users can create custom automations, integrate with various devices, and control their smart home with voice commands. It's a flexible and customizable solution that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of each user.

Benefits of Home Assistant

Home Assistant offers several benefits over Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, including:

• Customizable automations
• Integration with various devices
• Voice control
• Open-source and community-driven

Conclusion

Technology teams are watching smart home closely because changes in this space often arrive faster than internal policies can adapt.

For product and engineering leaders, the practical question is how this could reshape roadmaps, vendor choices, and security reviews over the next few quarters.

Organizations that document lessons early tend to respond more calmly when similar patterns appear again.

In many companies, the first impact shows up in planning meetings: teams reassess priorities, revisit risk registers, and check whether existing tooling still fits.

Smaller businesses feel these shifts too. A single platform change or market move can affect customer trust, delivery timelines, and hiring plans.

The most resilient teams treat stories like this as input for quarterly reviews rather than one-day headlines.

If your business depends on modern software, ERP, VoIP, or customer-facing apps, staying informed helps you separate noise from decisions that require action.

Looking ahead, disciplined follow-through matters: assign owners, set review dates, and measure whether your response improved outcomes.

Security and compliance stakeholders should ask whether current controls still match the pace of change described in this update.

Operations leaders can reduce friction by translating the headline into a short internal brief with clear next steps for each department.

Customer support teams may see early signals through tickets, outages, or policy questions long before leadership reviews are scheduled.

Finance and procurement groups should note whether licensing, vendor risk, or implementation costs need revisiting after this development.

Training programs benefit from timely updates so staff understand what changed, what did not change, and what requires escalation.

Architecture reviews are a practical place to test assumptions, especially when new tools, platforms, or threats enter the conversation.

Documentation quality often determines how quickly a company recovers from surprises; capture decisions while context is still clear.

Technology teams are watching smart home closely because changes in this space often arrive faster than internal policies can adapt.

For product and engineering leaders, the practical question is how this could reshape roadmaps, vendor choices, and security reviews over the next few quarters.

Organizations that document lessons early tend to respond more calmly when similar patterns appear again.

In many companies, the first impact shows up in planning meetings: teams reassess priorities, revisit risk registers, and check whether existing tooling still fits.

Smaller businesses feel these shifts too. A single platform change or market move can affect customer trust, delivery timelines, and hiring plans.

While Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa may be getting worse, there are alternative options available that can provide a better smart home experience. Home Assistant is a powerful and customizable platform that can help users automate and control their smart home devices with ease.