Gemini’s new features are useless as long as Google ignores the real problem

As I watched Google announce one new AI feature after another during I/O and the Android Show, and listened to people applaud and get excited about them, including my very own Android Authority team members, I couldn’t stop thinking about how none of it really matters.

Why? Because Google has segregated your Gemini experience across individual accounts, which means that its AI only has one view of your life. Your work or school Gemini has no idea what’s happening in your real life, and your real life Gemini doesn’t know anything about your more serious job or responsibilities. If you have more Google accounts dedicated to specific hobbies, or if, like me, you maintain a joint family account with your partner, then you can’t really rely on Gemini to have all the necessary context.

We all lead complex lives. If you’re a high school or college student, odds are you have a school Google account where you handle documents, assignments, class schedules, communication, and maybe even school-related browsing. If you’ve graduated and you’re working, you’ve probably been given a Google Workspace account for your work emails, meetings and events, all your work documents and sheets, and more.

I personally have my work-issued credit card tied to my work account’s Wallet, all of my events’ locations linked to my work Maps, my work-related video watching tied to my work’s YouTube, and I download all of my work-related apps like Asana and Slack through my work’s Play Store account. You get the gist.

On top of this, there’s the personal life. Your personal account where you email or message family and friends, your favorite Maps places, your personal credit cards, all your calendar events, your own browsing history and logins, your contacts, photos, YouTube viewing and searching history.

At no point in time do I think of myself as just an employee. And unless I’m on vacation, I never forget that I have a job and responsibilities. My life is both of these online presences, both of these Google accounts, both of these entities.

And Gemini, so far, can only see one at a time. In my opinion, this makes any personalization, any knowledge, and any recommendation it gives me moot because it doesn’t have the full context of my life. What good is the new Daily Brief if it can only brief me on my work stuff and not my personal stuff? Or vice versa? That’s like having one assistant at home and one at work and them having no idea what the other one is up to.

If I watch a video about a new pair of buds through work, but I’m thinking about buying them for personal use, I can’t ask my own Gemini about that. I need to switch to the work account. If someone contacts me on my personal account by mistake about a work thing, and I’m trying to find our communication a while later, and Gemini doesn’t see it, it’s because it’s looking in my work email, and I should’ve remembered the message was sent in error to my personal account. If I’m waiting for a package sent through work and another that I personally bought, I can’t see them in the same spot. There are countless examples like that, and the more pervasive Gemini becomes, with more features, more personalization, and more agentic powers, the bigger this gaping usability hole will become.

For those of us who have secondary Google accounts for specific hobbies or to manage a joint family life, it can be even more alienating. Most of my planning and purchases are done with my family account, but I still have a personal account for my private browsing, documents, and emails, among other things. The fact that I can’t query both my personal and family accounts together means I never really have a Gemini that understands who I am.

Worse than the fact that Gemini doesn’t support multiple accounts is that Google keeps adding hurdles to using multiple accounts with Gemini.

Of course, on my smart speakers, I only get access to one, so I chose my personal account. On my phone, though, I used to be able to open the Gemini app and swipe on the avatar on the top right to switch accounts — easy peasy (left screenshot above). But Google just rolled out an update that hides the account avatar in the side menu (right screenshot). So now, I have to open Gemini, slide the side menu, and then swipe to switch. If you have three accounts like I do, you have to open the side menu twice to swipe between the first and third account. Or you tap on the account switcher, wait for another screen to load, and then pick the account.

It used to be simple enough, now it’s contrived and annoying, and it kills any multiple-account usability in the Gemini app. It’s as if Google is telling us pick one Gemini, and let the others die. So I’m either tied to my personal Gemini or my professional Gemini, I can’t get both.

And let’s not even mention what Google has done with Gemini on Pixel Watches. Any time I switch the Google account in the Gemini app on my phone, the Gemini instance on my watch completely resets. I can’t use it unless I set it up from the phone from scratch again, because it shows me the “Get started” menu. It’s maddening! Even if I switch from personal to professional on my phone for a query and go back to personal, Gemini on my watch resets. It can’t remember that I gave it all the permissions! What kind of convoluted user experience is this?

What irks me the most about this issue with Gemini is that Google Assistant used to support multiple accounts. For years, we were able to link multiple personal and work Google addresses to the same Assistant instance and use it as a whole. Of course, it didn’t have as many capabilities as Gemini does today, but it could reach contacts on both accounts and read calendars from both, too.

The only workaround in Gemini today is the ability to give it access to multiple calendars through an Assistant workaround. You’d have to share those calendars with your personal email address, too, to see them there. But once that’s done, at least it knows what’s happening in your life and when. And by using the right words, “Add x to my [calendar name] calendar,” you can create events straight into your secondary calendars. There’s no similar integration for Gmail, Drive, Chrome, Photos, or any other Google service that’s getting Gemini powers.

And look, I understand that there are privacy concerns around giving Gemini access to work or school accounts, and around Gemini potentially merging both your professional and personal lives, but I’m sure Google could’ve and should’ve by now figured out a way to treat these these as two separate streams of info, only to merge them at the last minute when surfacing you personalized results.

We like to think of Gemini as a new product, but Bard launched at the tail end of 2023, so we’re two and half years in already, and someone at Google should’ve, by now, realized that they have a personal Google account and a work Google account, and that they can’t coexist in Gemini yet, right?