As mentioned the yesterday in the Google I/O keynote, all of the Google Home products are moving to be covered by the Nest banner. In doing so they are refocusing their products on not just the smart home but the ‘helpful home’.
As a step in the right direction due to negative media coverage surrounding privacy Google and Nest are making a commitment to privacy in the home. They are still going to offer creepy solutions at times but are going to tell you about it.
- They will explain their sensors and how they work. Every single one of them.
- They will tell you how that data they collect of you such as video footage, audio recordings and other sensors in the home are used to “offer helpful features and services”. The premise is that if you do not want that feature you *may* be able to turn it off. This data will be kept separate from advertising and ad personalisation.
- They will explain to you how you can control and manage your data.
They want to earn (and keep) your trust with not just added privacy openness but also a more secure account. You can now migrate your Nest account into your Google account giving the added control that comes with a Google account.
Google Nest are going to unify their efforts to connect the vast number of smart home products they support. At this stage they only support low powered (Wi-Fi) devices — any device that can be controlled by Google Assistant will be compatible. They estimate this to be over 30,000 devices.
While it may not seem like much of a change the rebranding of these devices will help Google to stream all their devices into the one direction and hopefully allow the products to advance and iterate faster resulting in a better experience for us — a more helpful home. What do you think?
