Google just pushed me one step closer to ditching Google Home for Amazon Alexa

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Google has, in quite literal terms, turned into an AI company. But ironically enough, it has evidently and consistently drifted away from that one product category meant to make AI omnipresent: smart speakers. Google’s indifference towards its smart speaker lineup for the better part of the decade and its declining everyday performance have already led people to question their decision to be in the Google Assistant ecosystem.

While Google recently announced its first smart speaker in several years, it’s still not publicly available. And on top of that, Google has seemingly discontinued the Nest Mini and Nest Audio .

With no replacement for these models, the new Google Home Speaker is still an unknown amount of time away, and given the current poor state of Google Home/Nest speakers, there is little incentive to stick with them. In comparison, Amazon starts to look like a much more serious alternative — one that doesn’t push you into picking up its one and only option.

There was a time when Google was serious about smart speakers. The era when we had real choice, even within the Google ecosystem, from speakers of varied sizes depending on how big a room you wanted to fill. Heck, there were even two different smart display sizes to choose from. You could get a display for your kitchen to watch recipe videos or put a simpler, screenless smart speaker in your bedroom to set alarms and timers. There was something for everyone — but gone are those good old days.

You already know that Google hasn’t updated any of its smart speakers or displays in several years. But at least those older models were still available. That too is changing now, with the Nest Mini and Nest Audio running out of stock to make way for the new Home Speaker.

The upcoming Google Home speaker is built from the ground up around Gemini and costs $100, the same as the recently announced Amazon Echo Dot Max . That leaves Google with no budget or more premium options around the new Home Speaker, and that’s a problem.

With just a single model to choose from, the Google Home Speaker becomes a no-brainer . It’s the default (and the only) choice that you have in the Google camp. That makes the shopping experience easy, but at the cost of nuance and choice — something that end users actually prefer. I like having the agency to buy the exact device that fits my needs instead of being forced into the only option a company is selling.