Google only recently began to see some success with its virtual assistant Google Home and was hoping to take on Amazon’s Alexa with its newest product. However, as it turns out, Google’s personal virtual assistant decided to take the weekend off, with users reporting indifferent behaviors and a widespread outage.
Google Home facing service outage
In the last few days, many users have noticed their Google Home giving this error message: “Hmm, something went wrong.” The message immediately follows the “Ok Google” hot word, so users are unable to even make an inquiry, adding to their disappointment. What really adds to the frustration is that other devices with Google Assistant are working fine, and no one really knows what’s going on.
This issue has been dominating discussions on Twitter and Google’s product forum, suggesting it to be a fairly widespread outage. To check if you are among those affected, use the trigger phrase, and if you get the reply, “Hmm, something went wrong. Try again in a few seconds,” or, “There was a glitch. Try again in a few seconds,” then you are one of the lucky ones. In fact, there may be no need to even check if you are affected, as according to Android Police, “Google Home has a nearly 100 percent failure rate.”
Google, for its part, said it is aware of the issue and is continuing to work to resolve it. The company is also asking users to give their feedback on the issue, as it could help them detect the root cause.
“We are actively investigating this matter and we greatly appreciate all the feedback and reports from everyone. Please bear with us while we continue to work on this,” read a response to a complaint filed to the Google Home Help Forum on May 31.
A big setback for Google
It is a bit shocking to see that even after so many days, the search giant has been unable to offer a fix. Though some users are saying that a hard reset fixed the issue with them, several others are still facing issues even after trying it. This failure will be a big setback for the search giant, which has big expectations for Google Home. At I/O, the company spent a lot of time talking about Assistant and Google Home. It even gave a free Home to attendees at I/O.
The outage comes just days after the smart speaker was made available for pre-order in another big market: Canada. The gadget, priced at C$180, can be ordered via Google’s online store and retailers such as Best Buy. The wait for pre-orders is about 2-3 weeks, the company says. So far, Google Home was only available in the U.S. and U.K. Going forward, the company plans to bring the voice assistant to Australia, France, Germany, and Japan.
Google released Home in November 2016, and it operates as a smart speaker that allows users to interact with it using voice commands. The device is WiFi-enabled, and it enables users to listen to music, read news updates, view photos or videos, and more.