Samsung yanks Google Assistant from its smart TVs

The days of built-in Google Assistant on Samsung TVs are numbered.

According to a recently spotted notice on a Samsung support page, Google Assistant will “no longer be available on Samsung TVs” starting March 1. 

Following the deadline, Amazon Alexa and Samsung’s Bixby will be the only on-board voice assistant options on Samsung smart TVs, as Android Police reports. 

The support page lists which Samsung TVs still–for now–offer built-in Google Assistant, including all 2022 and 2021-model Samsung smart TVs, as well as 2020 8K and 4K QLED TVs, 2020 Crystal UHD TVs, and 2020 “lifestyle” TVs such as the Frame, Serif, Terrace, and Sero. Samsung smart TVs from 2023 onward haven’t offered Google Assistant as a built-in voice assistant option. 

Samsung is pulling Google Assistant from its smart TVs “due to a change in Google’s policy,” according to the support page. 

We’ve reached out to Google and Samsung for more details. 

While built-in Google Assistant used to be a common sight on third-party smart TVs and smart speakers, more and more non-Google manufactures have been quietly dropping support for Google Assistant as a built-in voice assistant option.  

LG, for example, offered built-in Google Assistant on its soundbars as recently as 2019, but no more. Lenovo, meanwhile, had a series of well-received smart clocks powered by Google Assistant, but swapped it out for Alexa in 2022. 

Then there’s Sonos, which has been embroiled in a long-running patent dispute with Google. While you can still install Google Assistant on Sonos’s older speakers, the more recent Sonos Era 100 and 300 speakers dropped Google Assistant altogether. 

There are exceptions, such as JBL’s new Authentics-series speakers, which allow you (in a first) to install Alexa and Google Assistant side-by-side. 

As Android Police notes, Samsung had initially announced that it would offer built-in Google Assistant on its 2023 smart TVs, but that never happened, and Google Assistant was notable absent from Samsung’s 2024 TV lineup. 

The fate of Google Assistant has been murky in recent months, particularly with the rise of Google Bard.

Google pared back more than a dozen Google Assistant features last month, while the Assistant group weathered a round of layoffs around the same time. 

Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer