The central hub of all our media etc. But there are just so many simple things missing right now that it drives me crazy at times.

Our house came with in-ceiling speakers in every room so connecting a few Chromecast audios has been a great, and fairly cheap option to have a whole home audio system. The Google home makes that better by being able to control them without even pulling out my phone.

It's also very convenient to set timers, add things to a shopping list, ask some informational questions, but that's about it. You can't add events to your calendar, set reminders, create other lists besides shopping, send messages, etc (I've been able to do all that with Google Now for a couple years already and you can do all that and more with Google Assistant on the Pixel phone) and it's missing several other basic functions that Google Now can do as well as Assistant on the Google Pixel phone. Why isn't it the same across devices (Home and Pixel both have Assistant but the Home is much more limited)?

I hope Google continues to improve Google Home but after reading online about the issues I've lost some of that hope. The Home has been out for several months now and there haven't been any new feature releases. Also, people pointed out that Google often develops a great idea with not quite great execution, then a few years later releases a similar (and competing) product with a new brand that improves some things but is weaker in some areas as well. They just don't follow through and work on perfecting products. Obviously that's true with everything but it is a pattern with Google I've started to notice.

The good news is there are third party apps you can use that then enable the Home to do nearly everything I want it to. You can set it up with Quick Remote for Google Home to control your Roku, and there's an app you can set up to have more calendar control. People have set it up using IFTTT to control smart devices that Home isn't yet compatible with (thermostats, garage door openers, sprinkler systems, alarm systems, TVs, Plex server, etc.) So the functionality is there, I just wish more of it was native