Google ruins the Assistant’s shopping list, turns it into a big Google Express ad

The Google Assistant, Google's voice assistant that powers the Google app on Android phones, tablets, and Google Home, has just gotten a major downgrade. In a move reminiscent of all the forced and user-hostile Google+ integrations, Google has gutted the Google Assistant's shopping list functionality in order to turn it into a big advertisement for Google's shopping site, Google Express.

The shopping list has been a major feature of the Google Assistant. You can say "Add milk to my shopping list," and the Google Assistant would dutifully store this information somewhere. The shopping list used to live in Google Keep. Keep is Google's primary note-taking app, making it a natural home for the shopping list with lots of useful tools and management options. Now the shopping list lives in Google Express. Express is an online shopping site, and it has no business becoming a dedicated place to store a shopping list that probably has nothing to do with Google's online marketplace.

Since Google Express is an online shopping site (and, again, has no business having a note-taking app grafted onto it), the move from Keep to Google Express means the Assistant's shopping list functionality loses the following features:

• Being able to reorder items with drag and drop.
• Reminders. Google Keep could attach a time or location-based reminder to the shopping list. Walk into the store, and your shopping list pops up!
• Adding images to the shopping list.
• Adding voice recordings to the shopping list
• Real time collaboration with other users. (Express has sharing, but you can't see other people as they type—you have to refresh.)
• Android Wear integration.
• Desktop keyboard shortcuts.
• Checkbox management: deleting all checked items, unchecking all items, hiding checkboxes.

Alternatively, the move from Keep to Google Express means the Assistant shopping list gains the following features:

• Google Express advertising next to every list item.
• Google Express advertising at the bottom of the page.

The only things users seemed to have "gained" in this transition are a Google Express search button next to every single list item and a big "search for everything on Google Express" link at the bottom of the page. Sometimes there is also a Google Express ad in the middle of the page, slotting in nicely between the list item ads and the ad at the bottom.

This move frankly benefits no one but Google. The Assistant now only puts voice-added items in Google Express. There's no way to change it back to Google Keep. There's no way to restore the myriad features Google users have lost. The Assistant was pitched as a hardware feature on the Google Pixel, and it's the only feature on Google Home. Unlike most of Google's freebie, ad-supported apps, these are both devices that people paid cold, hard cash for, and to gut one of their best features in order to push a tier-three Google service feels like a bait-and-switch.

Stop trying to make Google Express happen

You'd be forgiven for having never heard of Google Express. Google Express is Google's Amazon Prime clone, but it comes without any of Amazon's sheer size, selection, direct sales, shipping prowess, free returns, video service, music service, or book service. Google Express' main hook—same-day delivery—only works in a tiny selection of major US cities, leaving the vast, vast amount of Google Assistant users with little reason to care about the service. Users outside the US can't even download the Google Express app, so they can no longer access their shopping list through an app. They're stuck with a mobile website.

Google itself didn't seem like it cared much about Google Express until now, either. The company treated this app more like an obligatory "Amazon competes with us in some areas so we have to build this Amazon Prime competitor" project rather than something that was organically good and useful. Google is great at advertising, search, and building software, all of which has little to do with shipping products out to users quickly at a low price. Without any synergy with the rest of the company, Express seemed like one of those Google services that would be quietly shuttered after a few years.

Google doesn't even seem that involved with Google Express. Google acts purely as a middleman—its own support page says it is only "an online marketplace that connects shoppers with popular stores." Google builds the online storefront that lists products from brick-and-mortar stores like Kohl's, Walgreens, and Guitar Center. Google doesn't fulfill the orders and doesn't ship the orders. Google does charge $95 a year for membership, but unlike Amazon it only offers fast shipping. Prime also throws in a premium video and music service, while Google's closest competitor, YouTube Red (which comes with a Google Music subscription), costs another $119.88 per year. This is to say nothing of the fact that Prime Video is a top-tier video service that offers TV shows, movies, and great original content, while YouTube Red only has video content from amateur YouTube "stars."

Grafting the shopping list onto Google Express seems wildly out of touch. Google Express has such a limited selection that many items just can't be found on the site. And maybe all the rich Silicon Valley Google employees shop differently than I do, but no amount of advertising is going to make me order toilet paper over the Internet at a hefty markup. Shopping lists are very often for groceries and other essentials that usually aren't bought online or can't be bought online. For the vast majority of users, the Google Express integration makes no sense.

A non-existent transition plan

Making a shopping list with voice commands is a thing normal people do. So if a company is ripping the Assistant/Keep integration out from under them, it should explain to users what's going on. But Google doesn't really do this. I still have the special "Google Assistant shopping list" in Google Keep, but the Assistant has quietly stopped sending new items to it. When you verbally add a new item, the Assistant opens a webpage for the Google Express shopping list. There's nothing in Google Keep that explains the Assistant shopping list won't work anymore.

The most communication Google has delivered is to release a support page detailing the change. No normal person has a way of finding out about the support page. If Google wanted to be really slick, the Google Assistant could just verbally explain the change to the user next time they invoke the shopping list feature. "Hey, just so you know, I moved your shopping list to Google Express against your will." (The Assistant could be programmed to answer user questions like "Why have you betrayed me, Google Assistant?" and "Where did all the list controls go?")

Google Keep is a default app on some devices, and it sits in the "100,000,000 - 500,000,000" install bucket on the Play Store. Google Express has only "500,000 - 1,000,000" installs—that's 200 to 500 times smaller of a user base. When the Assistant switches from Keep to Express, it displays the shopping list in a mobile webpage. Nothing in the Assistant tells the user that they could at least have the shopping list appear in a minimal app if they downloaded Google Express. This was something I only discovered after reading a comment thread.

I can't imagine how most people are going to deal with this. In a few days, I'll probably get a bunch of messages from friends and family, asking what happened to the Assistant shopping list. They'll want to know why it looks different and why the Google Keep list and the Assistant don't link up anymore. They'll also probably ask me why Google did this, and I won't have an answer for them. The move from Keep to Express removes a lot of important shopping list features in exchange for zero user benefits. It's a move that appears to only benefit Google, but even then I can't imagine that the many people building a shopping list for a brick-and-mortar store will convert to Google's expensive and limited online market place.

This move seems like something straight out of the Google+ era. It's a move designed solely to benefit Google by forcefully integrating two unrelated products. At least Google+ had the vague benefits of a universal Google profile and shared contacts list, but here there are no user enhancements at all in the move to Express. Google seems to just be hoping for a few extra conversions to its online shopping store.

If Google wants to retain users' trust, it should revert this change. Forget about pushing Google Express on users who are just trying to make a shopping list and focus only on providing a useful tool. Maybe Google will eventually fix Google Express and port over all of Google Keep's features. That still doesn't make it ok on "day one" to take away something that works and replace it with something that sucks.