Waze has long been one of the most reliable alternatives to Google Maps, which is why Google acquired it over a decade ago. But Google has left it out to dry for nearly a year with broken Assistant integration. The solution? Remove it altogether.

It’s hard to believe, but Google Assistant in Waze for the iPhone hasn’t been working for over a year. A staff member acknowledged this sad fact earlier this week in a post on the Waze community forum. To make a bad situation even worse, Google isn’t planning to roll out a fix. Instead, the company is simply phasing out Google Assistant from Waze completely.

Hi everyone,

We’d like to share an update with you regarding Google Assistant on Waze iOS.

As many of you have likely experienced, this feature has not been working as intended for over a year, and we sincerely apologize for the prolonged inconvenience.

Rather than simply patching a feature that has faced ongoing difficulties, we’ve decided to phase out Google Assistant on iOS starting tomorrow and replace it with an enhanced voice interaction solution in the near future. As always, we are committed to keeping you informed and will share more details as we progress.

It’s important to note that Google Assistant will continue to function seamlessly on Waze for Android, where it has consistently performed reliably.

Thank you for your understanding and continued dedication!

Leigh, on behalf of the Waze Communities Team

For those who have been following along with Google’s assistant situation, you can probably guess what that “enhanced voice interaction solution” will be: Gemini. Waze already started using Gemini for incident reporting late last year, so it will most certainly be coming to Waze in a larger capacity at some time in the future.

This comes just a couple of weeks after Google announced that Assistant will be fully replaced by Gemini later this year. Gemini is already the default assistant on many Android devices that have been launched recently, but it will soon take over completely fIt or the aging Google Assistant. Waze made sure to point out that “Google Assistant will continue to function seamlessly on Waze for Android, where it has consistently performed reliably,” but it’s clear its days are numbered as well.

Google Assistant is indeed aging–it was released almost 10 years ago–but it’s still an extremely viable assistant. Google itself admitted that it has more work to do to get the “quality of the day-to-day Gemini experience” up to speed with Assistant. Which of course, begs the question of why is it replacing Assistant to begin with?

Regardless of Gemini’s future, iPhone owners who rely on Waze will be stuck without Google Assistant for a while longer. The situation clearly shows Google’s lack of attention toward the Waze app on iPhone and doesn’t exactly bolster faith for it in the future. Thankfully, Apple Maps has gotten quite good, and Google Maps remains to be excellent on every platform.

Source: Waze