Google removes 'underutilized' Assistant features to focus on 'quality and reliability'

Google has announced that it will eliminate at least 17 features from its Assistant product, following news that it had laid off "hundreds" of employees from the division. The company is cutting "underutilized features" to "focus on quality and reliability, it wrote in a blog post, even though a good number of people may still rely on those functions. "Beginning on January 26, when you ask for one of these features, you may get a notification that it won't be available after a certain date," wrote Google Assistant VP Duke Dukellis. The company didn't specify how removing certain commands will improve Assistant, nor did it describe any specific quality and reliability problems. It did say, though, that improvements in the past were aided by user feedback, so it may have been receiving complaints about Assistant's core usability of late.