Amazon Alexa does significantly better when it comes to recognizing these basic commands and for smart home controls. Extremely quick and consistent. It's useless for web search question though.
Oh dang, yeah it's probably the language. Wouldn't surprise me that other languages aren't being prioritized by Google, which is a shame. German's an awesome language.
Edit cause I'm gonna look stupid for saying German without actually checking. I'm high, blame the grass. Whatever language it is looks awesome