Remember Google Home, Google's first and now discontinued smart speaker? Well, the speaker does not return, but the name Google Home is and this time means something much bigger.
During a summit for smart home developers on Thursday, Google announced it would bring back the Google Home brand, except that it now represents Google's entire smart home platform, including the company's Nest devices, Google Home app, Google Assistant and Google's smart home development tools. .
"We are gathering all this and announcing a new but familiar name for our entire smart home platform and development program, which helps users and developers do more with Google," the company said in a blog post for developers. .
"Bringing our platform and tools under the same roof gives us an easier way to show you why and how integrating your devices with Google Home makes them more accessible and useful in the Google ecosystem."
The rebranding comes amid Google's efforts to integrate its smart products with the long-awaited (and recently delayed) Matter, a future smart home standard that, among other things, aims to unite Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant - eh, Google The home—Platforms.
Don't feel bad if Google Home rebranding sounds confusing; It is. Launched in 2016, Google Home was Google's first smart speaker and came with the Google Home app and later the Google Home Hub smart display.
But in 2019, Google started naming all the latest speakers and smart screens "Nest", while Google Home Hub became Google Nest Hub. The Google Home speaker was discontinued last year, and every Google smart speaker and smart display has received Nest branding ever since.
Even though Google now gives the name "Google Home" to its entire smart home platform and developer toolkit, the Nest brand seems to be here to stay. Google unveiled a new line of Nest security cameras just a few months ago, and Nest gets some prominent mentions in today's blog post.
In a related announcement, Google said it will launch its own Matter-focused software development kit for Google Home devices, to go along with the open-source Matter specification and SDK.
Google said its new SDK is designed to complement the Matter SDK and will help Matter device developers "work seamlessly with Google, including setting up your device with Wizard, improving logging quality, and adding tools to interact and test with Google devices ”.
