For ten years "Hey Google" was the entrance to a machine that could do one thing well: carry out instructions. Set a timer, start the music, enter a destination, open a search. That era ends on 4 September 2026. Google starts removing the Assistant from smartphones and tablets and replacing it with Gemini.
For most people this is a software update. For companies it is something else. The route by which people ask about opening hours, service providers and recommendations while out and about becomes a channel in which an AI formulates the answer — and decides, in doing so, whom to name. This article sets out what changes technically, which parts of it matter for marketing, and what smaller companies should do over the coming weeks.
1. What happens on 4 September 2026
On that day Google begins withdrawing access to the Google Assistant on smartphones and tablets. One point matters for a sober reading: this is not a single switch thrown worldwide at once. The changeover is staged, and the Assistant disappears from different devices at different times. If you say "Hey Google" today and still get the old assistant, you simply have not been caught by a wave yet.
The successor is Gemini, Google's AI assistant. It is already available as an option on many Android devices; with the retirement it becomes the default. An optional upgrade turns into the preset — and in a mass market, presets decide almost everything.
2. Which devices are affected, and which are not yet
The retirement reaches considerably further than the phone. According to Google's announcement, it covers:
- Android smartphones and tablets — the main stage of the changeover.
- Wear OS watches — voice queries on the wrist now run through Gemini.
- Compatible headphones and earbuds — the assistant that answers when you tap the earpiece.
- Android Auto, where it is projected from the phone onto the vehicle.
Two exceptions are worth noting. Vehicles with Google built-in — that is, a permanently integrated Google system — continue to run beyond 4 September for the time being. Smart displays and speakers in the home are likewise not part of this wave. Neither changes the direction of travel; both shift the timing.
3. Assistant against Gemini: from command handler to answer machine
The technical difference sounds like a footnote but is the heart of the matter. The Assistant was a command interpreter. It recognised a limited set of intents, executed them, and pushed everything it did not know through to Google Search. At the end there was almost always a results list in which your website could hold a place.
Gemini works differently. It formulates its own coherent answer and names selected sources while doing so. Ten blue links become a paragraph with two or three references. It is the same mechanism many people already know from the AI overviews in Google Search — only now sitting at the default voice entrance of an entire operating system.
4. What this changes for marketing
Three shifts are foreseeable, and none of them is new. The Assistant changeover merely accelerates what has long been under way in search.
Fewer clicks on informational questions
Ask about opening hours, price ranges or a short explanation and you get the answer spoken or displayed directly. Industry analyses report click declines in the mid double-digit percentage range for informational queries since AI answers were expanded. Those figures vary strongly by sector and query type and are no forecast for your own account — as an indication of direction, though, they hold.
More weight on the brand
At the same time there is a counter-effect that often goes unnoticed. Whoever is named in the answer is subsequently searched for directly more often. The AI answer replaces the first click but produces a second one, via the brand name. That moves value away from generic keywords and towards recognition and mention.
The question itself changes
No longer "which position do I hold?" but "are my details set out so that a machine can take them over without asking a follow-up question?" That is precisely the core of what we group under generative engine optimisation — and the Assistant changeover now carries the subject onto every Android wrist and into every car.
5. Local visibility: the business profile becomes compulsory
Voice queries are disproportionately local. "Where can I find … near here", "is … still open?", "who does … in my area?" — that is the natural terrain of a mobile assistant. And the data source Google draws these answers from is the Google Business Profile.
Google has since built the management of that profile into Gemini itself. Owners can update opening hours, have replies to reviews drafted and query key figures in dialogue. The function is currently aimed at people with a verified profile; agencies and businesses with several locations are left out for now. For a typical single-site business it is a convenient way in.
More important than the tool, however, is the substance. A profile an AI can cite reliably is:
- complete — categories, services, attributes, photos, description, website link.
- current — opening hours above all, public holidays included. A wrong opening time in a spoken answer is a lost customer, not a cosmetic blemish.
- free of contradictions — identical details on the profile, the website and in directories.
- alive — answered reviews and maintained questions and answers supply the phrasings a model can draw on.
A practical note: write the four most common customer questions word for word into the questions area of your profile and answer each of them there in two or three sentences. That is the form generative systems take over most easily — short, factual, clearly attributed.
6. Becoming machine-readable: structured data, NAP and llms.txt
The business profile is one half, your website the other. For a model to take over your information without room for interpretation, it needs structure rather than prose:
- Structured data to schema.org: Organization or LocalBusiness with address, telephone, opening hours and service details; FAQPage for your common questions; Product or Service for your offering.
- NAP consistency: name, address and telephone number must match character for character on the website, the profile, the legal notice and in directories. Discrepancies do not produce an error message in a model, they produce uncertainty — and uncertainty leads to another source being named.
- A clear page structure: one question per heading, the answer directly beneath it, in one to three sentences. What a person can skim, a model can quote.
- llms.txt as an optional addition — a machine-readable table of contents for your most important pages. The standard is not yet universally established, but the effort is small.
We have looked at what that standard actually achieves in practice in our article on llms.txt being barely read.
7. Measuring rather than guessing: how to spot the effect
The changeover will not show up in your figures as a single drop but as a shift over weeks. Three vantage points help make it visible at all:
- GA4, traffic from AI assistants: since 2026 traffic from AI assistants can be evaluated in GA4 as a channel group of its own. Watch the volume and the quality of that group month on month. The details are in our article on the AI assistant channel group in GA4.
- Search Console, brand against generic queries: if generic impressions fall while brand queries rise, the mechanism described above is at work. If both fall, the problem lies elsewhere.
- Business profile, calls and route requests: these figures reflect local voice queries better than website sessions, because they do not require a click through to the site.
Set a reference point before the changeover. A comparison you only construct afterwards is not a comparison.
8. A checklist for the next 30 days
Nothing on this list is new, and none of it needs a budget. It only needs to be done in order.
- Go through the business profile from top to bottom: categories, services, attributes, photos, description, website link.
- Check the opening hours, public holidays included, and set a reminder for the next round of holidays.
- Compare name, address and telephone number across the website, the legal notice, the profile and every directory you appear in, character for character.
- Write the four most frequent customer questions into the questions area of your profile and answer them there in two or three sentences.
- Answer open reviews, and keep answering them.
- Add structured data for Organization or LocalBusiness, and FAQPage for your common questions.
- Restructure your most important pages so that one heading carries one question and the answer sits directly beneath it.
- Note the current values in GA4, Search Console and the business profile as a reference point.
- Add an llms.txt if the effort is available — it is optional, not decisive.
If you want to know how your company currently stands in AI answers, an initial conversation is free of charge and we look at the profile, the data and the visibility together.
9. Conclusion: one assistant fewer, one discipline more
The end of the Google Assistant is not in itself marketing news. It becomes significant through what takes its place: a system that writes answers instead of showing lists, and that depends in doing so on data quality many companies have so far treated as a side issue.
The good news is that the countermeasures are unspectacular. No new tool, no new budget. A complete business profile, consistent master data, structured data and clearly answered questions — that is the whole list. It has simply stopped being optional.
Our assessment: the Assistant changeover does not move rankings, it moves the ticket of admission. Supply clean, machine-readable company data and you get cited. Fail to supply it and you are not placed lower — you are simply not there.
Also worth reading: local AI visibility with the business profile, NAP and llms.txt.
10. FAQ: the key questions about the end of the Assistant
When is Google Assistant being switched off?
Google begins withdrawing access to the Google Assistant on smartphones and tablets on 4 September 2026. The changeover is staged, so the Assistant does not disappear from all devices at the same time. The successor is Gemini.
Which devices are affected by the retirement?
Android smartphones and tablets, Wear OS watches, compatible headphones and earbuds, and Android Auto where it is projected from the phone onto the vehicle. Cars with Google built-in continue to run for now, and smart displays and speakers are not affected at this stage either.
Why does the switch to Gemini matter for my marketing?
The Assistant carried out commands and referred people to results pages. Gemini instead formulates its own answers and names individual sources. For companies the question therefore moves from a position in a results list to whether your information appears in the answer at all. Clean, machine-readable company data becomes more important than classic ranking tricks.
What should smaller companies do now?
First, maintain the Google Business Profile so that it is complete and free of contradictions: opening hours, services, categories, photos and replies to reviews. Then make the website machine-readable — add structured data for Organization, LocalBusiness and FAQ, and keep name, address and telephone number identical across every channel. Finally, measure: GA4 now lets you evaluate traffic from AI assistants separately.
