Much like last year's event, CES 2024 is all about Matter – and Google isn't missing a beat, announcing in a blog post its plans to bolster TVs with Matter-compatible Google Home software.
While Google's smart home developments, both in terms of hardware and software, have slowed significantly in recent years, the brand played a foundational role in the creation of the Matter standard.
As such, it doesn't seem all that surprising for Google to increase the options consumers have to set up and control their smart home; that is until you consider that this move could stand to make Google's own Nest hubs obsolete.
New year, new home hub
In a blog post, Google announced its plans to transform LG TVs into Matter-compatible Google Home hubs, as well as select Google TVs and other Android TV OS devices. Right now, there's only a loose timeline of "later this year", according to a press conference delivered by LG earlier this week, which also highlighted that users will be able to "see, control, and manage both LG and Google Home devices from TVs or the ThinQ app.”
This news comes following announcements from Samsung that SmartThings will have an improved TV experience this year, so clearly there's a real push to break out smart home ecosystems out of the best smart speakers and best smart displays.
While Google did reference its existing home hub hardware briefly in the blog post, it was scarcely an honorary mention acknowledging their existence. Realistically, though, this announcement means Google Home fans who aren't particularly interested in Nest devices will no longer need one to control their smart homes.
Google Graveyard-bound?
Now, let's briefly talk about the future of Google's smart home. It's been nearly three years since we've seen any new hubs from Google, and while for a time that filled me with excitement for some big news to come, I'm growing increasingly nervous – especially given some of Google's Fitbit news this year – that there may be trouble ahead for Google smart home fans.
In 2023 alone we saw more features stripped from Google's hubs than added, especially compared to Amazon's ever-increasing array of skills and Apple's somewhat stagnant but solid approach.
For instance, the Sleep Sensing feature mentioned earlier was free to preview all through 2023, but in 2024 Google plans to integrate it into Fitbit Premium, a subscription-based service. Support for some features on Zoom and Meet ended in September, Dropcam support ended in April and a host of other Google Assistant voice apps got the chop, too.
Now, there could be a host of reasons development has slowed in the Google smart home labs. Google's Gemini LLM could be a big factor here, with the tech giant potentially vying to develop the most advanced smart assistant possible, but that doesn't necessarily explain some of the more conservative decisions made by Google in recent months.
Personally, I'm actually really excited to see TVs become more involved in smart home shenanigans; they are, after all, the central axis around which much of life at home rotates. I just hope it doesn't come at the expense of Nest hubs.
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