Someone Tested Google Gemini Spark's 24/7 Agent So You Don't Have To — Their Honest Verdict

Today we're going hands-on with Gemini Spark — Google's new 24/7 agentic assistant that runs in the cloud so you never have to leave your laptop open. A TechCrunch reporter put it through five real-world tasks: finding drugstore deals, building a packing list, hunting for summer camps, summarizing newsletters, and tracking a price drop. The verdict? Useful but unpolished — it found a real Annual Beaver Queen Pageant nearby, saved money at Walgreens, and surfaced local events from across the web in seconds. But it can't use Google Keep, occasionally returns wrong counts, and nobody can explain why it needs to be its own product instead of just being Gemini. The bigger question — is this what AI-for-everyone actually looks like in 2026, and is Google doing enough to make it feel essential?