Gemini Go comes to Android Go and buries Assistant Go for good

This was the last place where Google Assistant still fit. On Android Go phones, these low-budget devices with limited memory, Google's AI was considered too greedy. On June 3, Google decided: Gemini Go now replaces Assistant Go, which completes the migration started more than a year ago. In short, the historical assistant is experiencing its last weeks, even on the most modest mobiles.

Concretely, Gemini Go is a lighter version of Google's in-house chatbot, calibrated for Android Go devices with at least 2 GB of RAM. It is precisely this 2 GB threshold which blocked these phones until now: the models below remained on the old Assistant Go, a minimalist assistant limited to calls, SMS and weather.

You launch Gemini Go with a long press on the home button or the power key. On the menu: make calls, send messages, set an alarm, create a calendar event, or ask more twisted questions like “find me a ramen restaurant open Tuesday lunchtime with a charging station nearby”.

A migration that no longer leaves anyone behind

The real novelty is less what Gemini Go does than the fact that it finally exists. By passing Gemini below the resource bar of Android Go, Google is closing the last hole in its transition, in line with the great replacement of Gemini against Google Assistant. The deployment is done via an update of the Google Go application, and on these devices Gemini lives within the Google Search app, not in a dedicated application. However, be wary of the term “conversational” put forward: Google has not shared any screenshots, and on hardware with 2 GB of RAM, the real fluidity remains to be judged on the spot. We have already seen Google being invasive with its AI, when Chrome slipped 4 GB of AI onto hard drives without warning.

For the hundreds of millions of Android Go users, especially present in emerging markets, this is a real move upmarket, for those nostalgic for Assistant, it is confirmation that the door is closing everywhere.