The outage occurred at a rather inopportune moment, as Google had very recently lauded the various capabilities and fancy features of Google Assistant and its smart home hub at I/O. But many users suddenly found themselves unable to interact with their devices, with messages like “There was a glitch, try again,” popping up with alarming frequency at a time when many users were relaxing at home instead of toiling away in their offices.
In fact, this problem first appeared late last month. At the time, a Google Home representative replied to a complaint on the Google Home Help Forum, “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.”
Things finally reached a boiling point on Sunday, June 4, and by Monday, Google said that it had found a solution (though its related statement didn’t really address what the original problem was). In any case, if you were experiencing problems with your Google Home, you should be fine now, and if not, Google recommends restarting your device by unplugging it and plugging it back in after about a minute.
But really, all this proves is that no matter how smart your devices are, they’re not entirely infallible. So don’t hang up your hat just yet, friends. You’ll still need to maintain a few vestigial skills to make your way through this life, because our virtual assistants clearly can’t do everything for us … yet.
