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The new CC, an AI agent built for families

52 points · 63 comments · grigy

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laweijfmvo · 1790124363 · focus · HN ↗
Why in the world of all bad naming would they choose the two letters that abbreviate one of their largest competitors product
1. Retr0id · 1790124792 · focus · HN ↗
  And it's not even a CC-like, it's a claw-like, afaict?
2. layer8 · 1790125082 · focus · HN ↗
  By that measure, every email client is promoting Claude Code. ;)
3. [deleted] · 1790125175 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
4. ccimnuojf · 1790125935 · focus · HN ↗
  It's pretty obvious the name comes from the email cc: field
  Non-tech people who this is targeted at don't know what Claude Code is.
  1. tehlike · 1790126426 · focus · HN ↗
    They can still find a different name. Cc is not the only possible name in the names universe.
  2. devindotcom · 1790126618 · focus · HN ↗
    non tech people will never hear about it haha, and if they did they'd be ten times as baffled as the others in this thread
    shermozle · 1790127571 · focus · HN ↗
    Until someone at Google makes signups to this someone's KPI. Then you'll hear about it whenever you touch any Google product until it inevitably gets killed in 18 months. Meanwhile the PM hit their KPI and got promoted.
  3. giancarlostoro · 1790127284 · focus · HN ↗
    Thats still an awful name.
  4. nightski · 1790127498 · focus · HN ↗
    It took me 10 minutes to figure that out, and I have been in tech for 30 years :) I'm probably just dense but it's not a good sign.
  5. Lammy · 1790129036 · focus · HN ↗
    How many of non-tech people have even encountered the term CC before? E-mail is a receive-only medium for most of them.
  6. evolve2k · 1790139504 · focus · HN ↗
    Then keep the colon “cc:”
5. keel-control · 1790126700 · focus · HN ↗
  it's ridiculously bad
6. saghm · 1790126951 · focus · HN ↗
  My first thought was the irony of something used to interface with models that were trained on data that was presumably not properly licensed having the same name as the Creative Commons abbreviation.
7. giancarlostoro · 1790127249 · focus · HN ↗
  Same energy as calling YouTube Premium YouTube Red.
8. some_furry · 1790127339 · focus · HN ↗
  What is Google's CC supposed to even stand for?
  Carbon Copy? As in, a rip-off?
  Whatever hellhole committee named this did a poor job.
  1. MikeTheGreat · 1790129845 · focus · HN ↗
    According to other comments on this thread:
    Yes! That's it exactly! Carbon Copy!
    Except from email, not rip-offs :)
    /s
    (And: agreed on this being a terrible name!)
    evolve2k · 1790139581 · focus · HN ↗
    Are they trying to kill look-ups for CC meaning “creative commons”?
9. ValentineC · 1790128135 · focus · HN ↗
  Also, another unsearchable name, just like Go.
  I guess people will be searching for "CC agent" or something.
10. txhwind · 1790129096 · focus · HN ↗
  I guess they want to use the email CC concept showing the agent is a side assistant.
sparrish · 1790124826 · focus · HN ↗
Will be shuttered in 3... 2... 1...
Cause it's Google.
I don't use new Google services. They've shut down too many that I loved and used daily.
1. some_furry · 1790127423 · focus · HN ↗
  At least we know KilledByGoogle will never be starved for content.
2. basch · 1790144904 · focus · HN ↗
  Its not even a new google service. its a google labs service. its experimental so they can learn and they will shut it down.
3. OutOfHere · 1790176878 · focus · HN ↗
  The new ones that are not shutdown are so buggy that they're not worth using. They're vibecoded junk, and their staff never reasonably fix user-facing bugs.
jeena · 1790125187 · focus · HN ↗
I'm doing something similar but not for the whole family, just for myself, both for home stuff and for work stuff (seperated), but I just give pi access to the tools and accounts I want it to use. I don't use google for anything other than watching YouTube so it would not work for me anyway. I have a knowledge base git repo which the agents use together to do things. The PDF filling thing is especially cool with a KB in the background because the Agent can fill in 99% of the things by itself. It also organizes my todo lists and my calendar.
1. sanex · 1790125660 · focus · HN ↗
  What do you do for communication with the agent?
  1. jeena · 1790127261 · focus · HN ↗
    One is pi.dev on the console, but because the KB is a git repository I have it on each computer. On top of that I also run Hermes Agent and have set up there one agent to be responsible for the KB stuff and that one I connected to a Matrix channel and can use it from the phone and any device where I have a matrix client like Element set up.
    With pi.dev I use it in a container <a href="https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container" rel="nofollow">https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container and selectively give it access to Firefox via <a href="https://github.com/ThinkerYzu/foxmcp" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ThinkerYzu/foxmcp when I want it to help me with something in the browser (doing taxes, applying for things online in a foreign language, etc.)
VladVladikoff · 1790125189 · focus · HN ↗
What does CC stand for in this context? Shouldn’t you define your acronyms near the top of the article? Feels pretty amateur coming from Google.
1. stingraycharles · 1790125625 · focus · HN ↗
  I think it’s a reference to “CC’ing” someone by email (they also use that in the examples).
  1. giancarlostoro · 1790127384 · focus · HN ↗
    Why…
2. charcircuit · 1790125722 · focus · HN ↗
  It's not an acronym. It's a name.
3. DonsDiscountGas · 1790125753 · focus · HN ↗
  It has its own Google account, so maybe CC like in email? Which is "carbon copy".
  1. nickthegreek · 1790127543 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder if the younger generations could explain the origins of carbon copy.
  2. Lammy · 1790129197 · focus · HN ↗
    The winning euphemism for creepy AI-powered behavior surveillance→profiling→nudging seems to be “digital twin”, so that tracks.
4. lccerina · 1790149805 · focus · HN ↗
  It smells of CCC (Command and Control Center). I would not be surprised if they are testing logistic managements of medium-large groups of people and re-use ideas to get a taste of the Palantir/Anduril/whatever defence contracts pie.
dleslie · 1790125226 · focus · HN ↗
... So how long until all my Google photos are used as training data, and I see my kids in some advertisement without their consent?
pyrophane · 1790125621 · focus · HN ↗
Terribly confusing name and title.
whycome · 1790125648 · focus · HN ↗
Creative Commons. Closed Captions. Comedy Central. Cubic Centimeter.
I guess this is some sort of forced evolution of Carbon Copy but it seems weakly tied
taybin · 1790126014 · focus · HN ↗
It’s not like it’s a lot of work to fill out permission slips. Probably easier than scanning the document. Receiving permission slips is the only way I’m informed about school trips anyways. I’m not sure this is a valid use case. Maybe for people who want even less participation with their families.
ganoushoreilly · 1790126097 · focus · HN ↗
The problem with anything AI google launches is that it's going to be fragmented across products with different teams building their own interpretations and it's just not going to work seamlessly. Most of their efforts now fail in one way or another and my guess is that it's just a symptom of how google builds things.
: /
giancarlostoro · 1790127499 · focus · HN ↗
And the award for most awful product name launch this year goes to Google.
Seriously who wrote off on such an awful name?
1. not_a_bot_4sho · 1790127714 · focus · HN ↗
  I didn't realize Phil Spencer went to Google.
  Waiting for CCONE next
  1. giancarlostoro · 1790128285 · focus · HN ↗
    Reminds me of when I realized MSSQL sometimes gets shortened to just "SQL" or "SQL Server" always felt a little disingenuous like if they're implying they're the only SQL db in town, and then to top it off it dilutes search results.
    Go is already hard to look up, imagine trying to find help for "CC" of all things. Seriously, do they work on search engines at all over there? :)
2. kccqzy · 1790128312 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. giancarlostoro · 1790177163 · focus · HN ↗
    That sounds like it really flopped if that's the case, I haven't heard anyone excited about it, it's still not too late for them to rebrand it, especially if they want it to become relevant.
robotbikes · 1790127699 · focus · HN ↗
Something like this could be helpful but nobody should be willing to give up their families privacy and autonomy to a cloud solution ran by Google that could disappear at any point in the future. This is the kind of thing you want to have some level of control over and the ability to keep it going as long as it’s useful vs. rely on a corporation that has made its money datamining everything we do to sell advertising. Either they’ll eventually abandon it or worse case figure out how to load it with surveillance to sell targeted ads.
1. binary132 · 1790140235 · focus · HN ↗
  One thing I kinda like about the slop era is that it’s not so hard to clone apps like this to run entirely on local LLMs
colingauvin · 1790127911 · focus · HN ↗
I tried to connect Claude to my Google workspace calendar and email and tasks. Calendar and email no problems. But no public Tasks mcp server seems to exist. I'd have to host my own.
homeonthemtn · 1790127915 · focus · HN ↗
I look forward to Google quietly ghosting this as well.
ycui7 · 1790128453 · focus · HN ↗
remind me in the old time, we use cc to compile code to machine code. it was cc not gcc.
yipinwong · 1790128515 · focus · HN ↗
Thing will die and go to grave in no time.
dhon_ · 1790128588 · focus · HN ↗
As a parent with kids at three different schools, help keeping track of their schedules would be amazing.
Currently updates from the schools are spread over multiple sources: paper notes, email, sms, "news" and "calendar" in school app (which are not kept in sync), and Facebook. Different schools use different apps.
Additionally the channels are often noisy, with messages about groups my kids don't belong to, and "helpful tips" like how to pack healthy lunchboxes. These notifications come in during the day while I'm working, get dismissed due to the low SNR and then the useful ones often slip through unnoticed.
Definitely an area that is ripe for disruption, but as others here have commented, I don't feel confident about Google being the provider.
1. aryehof · 1790144085 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. jhanschoo · 1790154211 · focus · HN ↗
    From hearsay, I hear that prestigious private schools tend to communicate very frequently, which manufactures value and evidence that the school has rich experiences for the students. And there may be a mutual expectation for parents to be "involved" in it, contrasted with families that require schools to serve as a childcare.
    Freedumbs · 1790162629 · focus · HN ↗
    Referring to public schools as childcare is some elitist nonsense. Public education in United States has been destroyed by decades of attacks on it by politicians, sure. But referring to it as childcare is not productive. If education literally is serving that role, the responsibilities should be split because it would dilute the education experience.
    It's sort of confusing though because all schools for children are by definition childcare, and you try to diminish the public variant.
  2. jkahrs595 · 1790161620 · focus · HN ↗
    When you were a child you didn’t care (or weren’t aware) about your school’s communication with your parents. Can’t say that is surprising to me, you were a child.
    Any thoughts on the subject as a parent with a child in school in the modern day? Or were you just eager to throw out a “back in my day”?
2. basch · 1790144442 · focus · HN ↗
  >multiple sources
  how about when a kid has 7 classes, and each teacher says to just check the google doc within google classroom where they each type daily notes into unstructured tables that are each different for each class oh and parents dont actually have their own google classroom login they are just supposed to log into the kids account.
  Also, family management is so *fundamentally broken* that it's disheartening and almost laughable that priority is ai over global acl management. There should not be a separate parental control dashboard for roblox, fortnite, instagram, tiktok, etc etc etc etc. Every app should be REQUIRED to expose all parental controls in a standard protocol upstream to identity management that is manageable by multiple management accounts in a family unit. I should be able to go into settings, click a kid, turn off chat for a child, and it instantly updates on my partners phone without needing an account at the service itself to manage it and knowing the ins and outs of how their parental controls are evolving weekly. Family settings should exist ABOVE any single user account and apply to all accounts to any service linked within the family.
3. pokot0 · 1790168168 · focus · HN ↗
  My wife and I have been working exactly on this for some time now. We are building a companion for families to help you keep your life, career, physical and mental health in order in the challenging times when you raise a family and are building your career.
  We are running a small trial group right now to optimize the experience and see how people and real non-tech families react to this.
  We are a tiny startup and our business is not data nor customer addiction. We will simply be charging our customers and put them at the center of our focus. We are honestly trying to understand what can genuinely be helpful to families and make all the innovations that we are seeing available to them.
  This is not targeted to the HN crowd; yes, you can hack your assistant with a bunch of Claude/Codex automations and be happy! 100% possible and also fun to do. This is for everyone else that has no time/skills/intention to sit in front of a laptop for this.
  I saw the post yesterday but decided to not write right away and wait for the post to slow down as we are supposed to be in a closed trial since each user costs us money right out of our pockets and there is no monetization yet.
  But if someone is genuinely interested and wants to give it a try and keep in touch, here is the link:
  <a href="https://empla.io/ai-employees/family-assistant" rel="nofollow">https://empla.io/ai-employees/family-assistant
  We are actively rolling out features and optimizing the experience all the time, so pardon the rough edges!
lowbloodsugar · 1790128971 · focus · HN ↗
Fuck you Google.
1. bot403 · 1790134815 · focus · HN ↗
  Any reason in particular this time?
reilly3000 · 1790130586 · focus · HN ↗
“CC” is a great wake word. That is all. The fact that it also bridges the concept of (e)mail carbon copy into discrete agentic permissions, while namemogging their rivals (Claude Code and Siri phonetically) and dismissing Creative Commons… baseless claims.
In the coming age of voice AI ubiquity its prime phonetic property and now it’s theirs to lose.
zhivota · 1790131325 · focus · HN ↗
This is an interesting idea, but I don't trust Google to maintain it so why should I invest?
I know I'm not the audience probably but I also can create my own version of this using Cursor that is much more targeted to my family needs very quickly, using Jev and Deepseek, the token costs would be negligible.
The only value add here is trust, I basically trust Google to safeguard my data, and any other providers I have to spend time and effort thinking of how to limit their access. And yes, I know many people don't trust them, fine, I'm talking here about Gmail and Gsuite users.
For now I prefer to have a push type system where I push only relevant information to an agentic system, not have it constantly scanning everything.
armchairhacker · 1790153185 · focus · HN ↗
What does CC stand for, and why isn't this named "Gemini for Families"?
1. mrheosuper · 1790153663 · focus · HN ↗
  Claude Code, in context of LLM/AI.
railka · 1790161552 · focus · HN ↗
IMHO, the "CC" acronym is already claimed by Claude Code. They sure know how to pick project names.

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