Animal of the Day is ending!!!

[SRS]

Hi @All

Is the Animal of the Day ending at the end of Nov 23??

It's a fun function we access as a family and don't know why these prerecorded are ending.

Anyone know how we can log we want to keep this feature?? 

Thanks 

[Ceick]

My partner and I had asked the animal of the day question every night before bed. It was our favorite part of our night.... sucks to just completely erase the feature just because it's not deemed useful. So much for appreciating what users enjoy. 🙄 

[Jakeington]

Having stuff like this really helped our family's feeling of goodwill towards Google. Seemed almost part of the family when my child would ask for animal of the day etc. Is "tell me a story" next?

"Useful" as you mention, is really a strange metric to try to quantify for things like this. Do engineers not have kids?

[Ryangiesen]

My son cried today when he found out animal of the day was gone. How does getting rid of a feature improve the product? Hope you guys reconsider this. 

[Danm0000]

It’s the only feature it had over Siri. Bye bye Google home. 

[jwgourley]

My kids had, admittedly, not done animal of the day in a bit and asked today and were HEARTBROKEN to find it gone. Considering most of the jokes google tells require tons of explanation for kids, I’d love to hear what fun/educational things google is doing for families. 

[zaindada]

I used to work for this company, and—no—they don’t actually listen to community feedback. It just goes into a black box that no one ever checks. They don’t really care what you think, and it doesn’t factor into their product decisions at all. Useless company that makes products that they deprecate without adequate replacements a couple years later. Don’t buy Google products—you’ll always get burned in the end.

[MikeCurley]

Why do they even bother? They used to be an innovator. Now they just come out with junk that never works as advertised.

[Hcguerrer1]

Please bring it back! My kids loved this feature and we are all so disappointed it was discontinued. 

[Kayla912]

I am a die hard Google fan - recommend it to everyone - have around 14 different Google devices in our home. But removing Animal of the Day, Bedtime Stories and Games might have just broke me..... I will hold out for some big roll out for a few more months but if they continue to take away the family friendly additions I will no longer support these devices and will make a switch. 

[Juni]

Hi folks,

We appreciate you posting and letting us know what you think. Right now, the best option is to submit feedback using the link in this thread.

Best,

Juni

[stiggy]

Surely Google made some kind of cost-analysis, where it shows how many people enjoy it, and how much it costs to keep this specific command available? I think it would be very good to share this. If, for example, 100 people enjoy it every day, but it costs $10000 per day, then it makes sense to retire the feature. Surely Google bases decisions on these calculations, right? It's not like there's an uninformed manager that decides Google needs to focus on its core business of *throws dart* cloud synergy and feels this is not part of it?

[Super_paulie]

i mean the costs to keep animal of the day active must be absolutely tiny, its a very strange decision. 

[stiggy]

No necessarily; it depends on how they engineered it, if they need to pay another company for it, if the voice actors get a buck everytime someone plays it. These costs can be very high if bad decisions are made early in the project.

[ahsley87]

My kids LOVED this too! We had so much fun listening to it at dinner time. If Google's direction is not geared at families then we'll be switching to Alexa since others have noted their family direction and that they still have animal of the day.

[Pintsizedone84]

We've been very sad about Animal of the Day too. My 7 and 5 year old grew up asking and learning about the animals through this and it feels like it's just another cut in the constant dreariness of every day life. It's a shame it has to affect our little ones and not just us grown ups. I honestly can't see why they have a few hundred of the daily animals on a loop. Zero maintenance. And I think it's pretty obvious it has been a very popular feature. Just not making them any money is it. Typical of today's society.