Thanks for the explanation. I’d hit this a couple of times recently. I thought my “solution” was the reason it started working. It may have been a combination of both the Google Cloud threshold and my solution because things began functioning “incrementally”. If it had been just the Google threshold, probably nothing would have worked until that block was lifted.
@rlkoshak, I was not aware of this opportunity. It is more than worth joining and making a donation. I will do so as soon as I finish posting this note. I trust that these funds can also be used to pay for the Google Assistant integration when it does become “real” (@Kai) money 
Regards.
Mike