Received a google home mini for xmas, was curious to see what I could do with it. On trying to play music, would not make http requests to youtube for me, wanted me to have Google Play account. Then I tried to query 'closest open pharmacy to my house' a dozen different ways but would not do it. If I could make queries of the nature I stated, and if these voice assistants would just stop trying to get me to download their apps and make http requests to public sites for me, it would blow things wide open!
I received one as well. Most of the time it sits on mute, to be honest. (It sits right next to the TV and sometimes the TV would cue it into action and it would respond to what it thought was a legitimate query)
I found that for some music, it would find a radio station named after exactly what I was looking for (for instance a 'station' that only plays the one band or one song) after prompting me to get Google Play.
The most used function on there is the built-in trivia app my girlfriend and I play Saturday mornings while we're doing other things.
I never had a real problem with the search function, though. I'm surprised it wouldn't find results for that question. Did you have location disabled?
