Sorry, folks: Pixel 4's new Google Assistant won't work with your G Suite account [Updated]

By Muhammad Jarir Kanji
last updated

Google Assistant on Pixel 3a
Google Assistant on Pixel 3a (Image credit: Ara Wagoner / Android Central)

What you need to know

  • Having a G Suite account active on your Pixel 4 will default you to the old Google Assistant.
  • The Assistant is currently a Pixel 4 and U.S. exclusive and only works in English.
  • The new Google Assistant is up to 10 times faster and does most of its processing locally.

Update: October 21 7:50 AM ET:

Google has confirmed with us that it is working on making the new Assistant compatible with G Suite accounts. The company provided us with the following statement:

We're looking to add support soon for G Suite accounts (in the new Google Assistant).We can't share exact timing, but is something that's definitely top of mind.

As spotted by Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii, the new Google Assistant experience is apparently incompatible with G Suite accounts, making for an even more bizarre limitation for the revamped digital assistant than the ones we've discovered so far.

After being unable to access the new Assistant — ten times faster than the previous version — on his Pixel 4, Artem discovered that removing his work account from the device seemed to have solved the issue. Despite sporting a new look and blazing fast performance courtesy of its on-device processing, the new Assistant appears to be hobbled with various limitations at launch.

Alongside the above, the new experience is limited to only English at launch. It's also not available outside the U.S. (as yet) and, in an even more perplexing twist, is automatically disabled if you don't use the newfangled gesture navigation system on the Pixel 4, leaving disabled persons, tech neophytes and your grandpa at the mercy of an internet connection if they want to interact with their phone without the hassle of dealing with all those pesky buttons and menus.

That's not even considering the fact that the new Assistant will be a timed exclusive for the Pixel 4. Google wowed many with its AI prowess back at Google I/O — the new Assistant needs but 500 MB of storage on your phone to do what its predecessors used to require 100 GB+ and dedicated servers for. And that's precisely why it's such a shame that the company is putting up so many artificial barriers before those who want to experience its latest innovations firsthand.

The only phone with the new Assistant
Google Pixel 4

Google's most sophisticated flagship yet.
Google is going all out in many ways with the new Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, two phones that are the very best of what Google can offer. Featuring lightning-faced facial recognition, a stellar camera that can take pictures of galaxies, and the brand new lightning-fast Google Assistant at your fingertips.

Muhammad Jarir Kanji
Muhammad Jarir Kanji
12 Comments
  • Having a G-Suite account gets more and more infuriating... I first signed up when it was "Gmail for hosted domains" so that I could use my personal email address with Google. Over time, this morphed into their "business" offering, but I'm far from a business. Now, I have an account with hundreds of purchased apps, lots of movies and TV shows, as well as over a decade of training Google's recommendation engine. In exchange for paying google over $1200, my account can't: 1. Rate apps in the Play store
    2. Set reminders using Google Assistant
    3. Add additional accounts to Nest/Google Home devices
    4. Use the new Google Assistant at all.
  • I can do the first 2 of your list on gsuite, but not the last two. I've branched out to having both my main gsuite account and a secondary for assistant and google one / photos / drive
  • That's what I had been planning to do for a while, but for the new Assistant, it's not just a matter of which is "primary", it doesn't work if you use a G Suite on the device at all!
  • Google must really think highly of their new assistant if they think people will jump through so many hoops for it.
  • I just can't with google anymore. This is infuriating. I am going to cancel my pixel order and just transition to Microsoft's hosted email and storage solution. Google clearly hates people who pay them actual money for services.
  • I've voiced my frustration elsewhere about this, but it really was the final straw in not making a pre-order. I don't have a choice but to use my personal phone with my work G-Suite account. I can't think of another company where going all in as a paying customer in addition to their free offerings get's you so many limitations.
  • Yeah...this sucks. I need to have my work email on my device.
  • One more reason not to get a pixel 4.
  • What else does one expect from a company that makes all their money selling advertising? If Google thought selling services and hardware were more lucrative than hoovering up everyone's data they would change their model. What's amazing is Google had thus far never had a major dats leak come back to haunt them.... yet. N
  • What's amazing to my is that people still flock to Google products in the first place. If you invest in Google products you must also prepare to have those services abandoned one day. I'm so fed up with Google I left everything but maps behind a long time ago.
  • For the update: Please keep on Google about this. They have a history of making promises like this, and then quietly just never addressing it. Play Store ratings is one example. Android Auto for Phone Screens is a more recent one.
  • The only walk around I was able to find was to download a third party app like my.email to handle my G-suite emails. Of course this will only work for people who only need emails and nothing else.