Changes in Google in Google Nest may make the smart home a little more stupid

This week, Google announced that it will incorporate the Nest brand into its broader line of home products, making Nest the brand of all smart home gadgets sold. As part of this integration, Google's Home Speaker and Smartphone products now carry the Nest brand and feature Nest features.

But in addition to the brand change, Google announced that it will stop the Works with Nest program at the end of August, dismantling a set of controls that allow other device makers and service providers to integrate into the Nest device ecosystem. . Instead, Google will offer a new Works program with Google Assistant, which will require companies to support Google Assistant if they want their customers to be able to integrate Nest products. If you want any other product to play well with your Nest products, you must have a Google Account.

But more importantly, it may point to a future where there will be fewer compatible smart home gadgets, a time when you will need to purchase your components from Google or its trusted partners to use them together.

Google says it's doing this move in the name of privacy; By eliminating the Works with Nest program, third-party devices will have much less access to data entered by various smart thermostats, smoke detectors, cameras, alarms, and future Nest products, reducing opportunities for abuse. Variety indicates that Google plans to "give a small number of carefully controlled partners access to additional data", but the company did not specify who these partners were or what devices or services they provided to the company. 39, present time.

The protection of privacy, especially in smart homes, has been a hot topic for some time and is something that Nest has had to face recently. With so much personally identifiable data captured by the many connected devices that can be installed in a home, locking access to this data makes sense and is apparently a good choice for consumers. Just have a stranger talk to your baby through your connected security camera to make you want to extract all connected devices from your home.

The downside of these larger privacy restrictions is that it will probably be a lot harder to incorporate a Nest Thermostat into a larger smart home plan once Works with Nest vanishes. A smart home is especially useful when you can integrate all types of sensors, peripherals and services to perform automation. Imagine a house where ventilation, lighting, locks, etc. are automated depending on where people are in the house at any time. This type of automation necessarily requires a lot of data to know if you are at home, what you do at home and how it can adapt and react better to meet your needs.

Google says the Assistant is working with more than 3,500 home automation brands and more than 30,000 devices at the moment. However, if you've ever tried setting up complex automations on a wide range of devices using the Google Assistant app, you'll know how easy it is to reach the limits of this. that you can do.

The Works with Nest program has been around since 2014, and many device manufacturers have integrated their products into it. This now means that thousands of devices and services are in limbo, with no guarantee that they are all worn in the Works program with Google Assistant, or because their developers do not have the resources to rewrite their integrations, or because Google will not offer the same amount and types of data to third parties anymore.

Picture of Dan Seifert / The Verge

Today, companies such as Lutron, SimpliSafe, and others use Nest's Home / Remote States to control things like lighting, smart blinds, home security systems, and more. Some of these big companies hope to be able to integrate all the existing features when they will fully upgrade to the Google Assistant program later this year, but they can not give their customers any real guarantee that things will not happen. change significantly.

A notice sent to Lutron's customers after Google's announcement indicated that the change would affect Nest's state of residence and Nest-based lighting automation capabilities on personal alerts issued. Nest cameras or Nest Protect's smoke or carbon monoxide detection. This will also remove the ability to control the Nest Thermostat from the Lutron smartphone app.

"We look forward to working with Google on the Works with Google Assistant program to determine the best way to care for our joint customers and optimize Lutron's user experience," said Matt Swatsky, vice -president of Lutron's mid-market activities in the residential sector. The edge.

In the same way, SimpliSafe customers will no longer be able to directly control a Nest Thermostat based on the alarm status of SimpliSafe, nor view the current temperature of their home from the SimpliSafe app. "For example, people can see their thermostat go down each time they set the alarm on" Away "so as not to heat an empty house in the winter," says Chad Laurans, CEO of SimpliSafe. Now, they will need a workaround by using Google Assistant to schedule both the thermostat and the alarm system. "Instead of a SimpliSafe interaction with Nest, it's an interaction between SimpliSafe and Nest with Assistant," he explains.

Services such as If This Then That (IFTTT), which support a wide variety of smart home gadgets and services, also enable you to link actions across the web to perform complex and convenient automations. But IFTTT is one of the specific parts of an interoperable smart home that Google says is moving away: once Works with Nest is stopped, IFTTT support stops completely.

In the eyes of Google, IFTTT has the disadvantage that its widely open design and compatibility make your data too cavalier, and it is impossible for Google to control the place of data sharing and support IFTTT at the same time. Google indicates that it is working on activating many similar features and automations via the Google Assistant, but it is likely that there will be outliers or obscurities that simply will not be available after the stop. IFTTT had a whole community of smart, experienced homes trying to connect devices, but we can not expect Google and its small number of trusted partners to spend that much time.

IFTTT is not the only set of DIY integrations to disappear. DIYers used Nest's relatively open APIs to create all sorts of things that were not officially supported by device manufacturers. Samsung SmartThings is an example. The company has never officially supported the Nest Thermostat or other devices on its platform. But the home DIY developer community has built unofficial integrations that allow SmartThings customers to access data from their Nest Thermostats and use them to control other devices supported by SmartThings. It's safe to say that these types of integrations will not work at all once Works with Nest is stopped.

And if Google is willing to restrict access to its allies – the SimpliSafes and the Lutrons of the world – what could it want to do to its competitors? Amazon's Alexa Assistant currently has two nesting skills that allow her to control Thermostats and Nest Cameras through voice commands to Echo speakers. As a direct competitor, it is highly unlikely that Google offers support for Alexa controls in the new Works program with Google Assistant. "We continue to look for ways for our customers to continue to use other systems with their Nest products after the account is migrated and after the Works with Nest service is closed," a Google spokesperson said. partners who would benefit from more in-depth access.

Picture of Dan Seifert / The Verge

Nest's smart thermostats are often entry drugs into the smart home ecosystem, but they could soon become entry drugs for a more isolated Google ecosystem. Imagine a future in which you'll need to purchase a Nest Security System, Nest Cameras, Nest Rings, and more if you want to install a Nest Thermostat in the center of your home. think about the future and weigh this opportunity before buying a Nest product now. "When you leave the integrity of your current home to a company, you want to know that they will not unplug you," says Laurans of SimpliSafe.

Consumer choice does not, of course, have any restrictions on interoperability. Even assuming you want to buy exclusive Google Nest branded hardware for your home, other Nest products are often lacking and do not provide as complete a suite of features as competing products, let alone their higher price.

Nest does not offer a battery-powered camera, battery door, Nest Secure home security system, or any type of fire monitoring service, even though Nest manufactures connected smoke detectors itself. An open platform, or more widely supported, would allow the customer to choose a Nest Thermostat, a SimpliSafe security system, an Amazon Echo and a battery-operated bell, to best meet the needs of their home. . Ring does not currently include Nest devices; This week's announcement means it will probably never be the case.

Houses are perhaps the most unique and personalized objects in our lives, even more so than cars, phones or even computers. The needs, priorities and schedules of each home and family are different from those of others. As a result, different smart home providers and device manufacturers need greater flexibility so that homeowners can customize their systems accordingly. Otherwise, the smart home will never be as smart or as useful as it could be.

Google is right to say that privacy is a major concern for smart gadgets for the home, perhaps more than for any other modern device. But we asked for a privacy barrier, and it looks like we're getting a walled garden.