- Google Home is rolling out Gemini in 16 more regions
- Despite this, users continue to experience performance issues with the commands.
- A handful of users have expressed their opinions on Reddit, but Google has been refining the experience.
After a six-month wait, Google Home is finally expanding its Gemini early access program to countries outside the US, Canada and Mexico, but users are not getting along well with the updated voice assistant.
The company shared a post on the Google Nest community site detailing that it will roll out Gemini for Home in 7 new languages in the following 16 countries:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Ireland
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Spain
- Sweden
- Swiss
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Japan
- New Zealand
As mentioned, the launch is still in early access, so you’ll only have access to Gemini for Home on your Google speaker or smart display if you opt to sign up through the Google Home app, as 9to5Google says.
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The move is part of the company’s massive overhaul of Google Assistant, its longtime virtual assistant on a host of Google smart home devices, including the Google Nest Audio and the Google Nest Hub smart display. Google announced the replacement in October 2025, but the implementation has not been the easiest and users have faced major issues that have not yet been resolved.
“I’m back to Google Assistant”
Users were hoping that the Gemini for Home update would be the answer to a smoother smart home experience, but it turns out that this is far from the case. If anything, Google Home device owners have called it a “downgrade,” as one Reddit thread says, but why do users hate it so much?
A common problem among Google Home users relates to slow and sometimes absent responses to home commands. As one user shared, they experienced a 7-10 second delay before Gemini took action after asking it to turn on a light; “It is so slow to activate my home commands that it is almost useless,” they stated. And the same goes for routines, as another frustrated user pointed out: “At worst it’s like a five minute delay, but lately it’s been around ten seconds.”
The rise of these common mistakes has not convinced users that the Gemini for Home is a suitable enough model to replace the Google Assistant, which a handful of users say is arguably the best. As a result, users are looking for ways to reuse the voice assistant’s predecessor, but Google has promised a series of much-needed updates in the global launch of Gemini for Home.
With the next phase of Gemini for Home’s global expansion, the tech giant revealed that it has been refining the Gemini experience based on user feedback. In addition to updating support for the family experience and reducing verbosity to ensure more natural interactions, Google says it has reduced smart home latency by 40% for faster responses to voice commands, as well as improving Gemini’s contextual intelligence to distinguish between different devices in its smart home ecosystem.
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