nest

Google's acquisition of Nest and eventual migration of brands and accounts unsurprisingly met with some pushback. In addition to privacy concerns, there were some issues when moving from Nest's own platform to Google's. One pain point, in particular, revolved around features in the Nest app that haven't made their way yet to Google Home. Fortunately, it seems that Google is indeed working on resolving that problem, and an upcoming version of the Google Home app could see the arrival of two old Nest Hello features to the new app.

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Smart home products are getting more common and more accessible, but, as recent events prove, they are far from being the completely reliable and trustworthy parts of our lives that ads and videos would have us believe. Part of that relies on companies and agents on the remote side acting more responsibly in their ability to control these devices from afar. Another part of that formula, however, also depends on manufacturers ensuring the security and privacy of their products and customers, something that Google's Nest is promising to do better.

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Many people have switched to smart thermostats, such as the one that Nest makes, to help save money on utility bills by having better control over the temperature in their homes. Smart thermostats allow homeowners to remotely control the temperature inside their home to cool it down when they're ready to return home and allow it to be warmer when no one is there. Recently, some Thermostat users in Texas who were part of several programs ran by electric companies have lost control of their own home temperature with the electric company remotely raising the temperature in homes.

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The first Google Store is almost open, and if you can't make it to New York City to check out the new brick & mortar shop, a virtual walk-around is the next best thing. Google announced earlier in the year that it would be opening its first physical location for device sales, and now it has opened its doors in Chelsea, NYC.

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Google Assistant has always revolved around voice interactions but Google was able to give it a face in the form of smart displays. Now falling under the Nest smart home brand, Google has provided some visual feedback to augment Google Assistant's capabilities in your house. Not all smart Assistant features are available yet on those smart displays, however, and one upcoming addition will make booking tables at restaurants a breeze. At least when Google Duplex does finally arrive on the Nest Hub Max and its kin.

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Today Google announced that their operating system Fuchsia OS is ready for prime time. They'll be releasing the software for the first-gen Nest Hub first, followed by a whole bunch of other devices in the near future. UPDATE: If you own a first-generation Nest Hub, you could be getting the update to Fuchsia OS as soon as today!*

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It was really not unexpected that the beginnings of the smart home market saw different systems that spoke different languages, a.k.a. protocols, to coordinate their activities. There were attempts to consolidate these different systems or at least support most of them one way or another. Matter, the new name of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, is the latest such attempt and it's coming not only to Android but also Google's Nest smart home platform.

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Google is warning Google Wifi users that it'll be axing the app they use to control and monitor the mesh networking system, part of a push to condense smart home and IoT control into a single place. The current Google Wifi app will be deprecated, Google confirmed today in an email to users, with its role taken over by the Google Home app instead.

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Google has finally found an application worthy of its fiendishly clever Soli chip, and quite frankly it's wasted in a smart display. Or more accurately, the Nest Hub 2nd Gen may be a great showcase for what Soli, the short-range radar, is capable of with Sleep Sensing, but I can't help but wish Google had just made a standalone sensor instead.

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Google is hoping you'll like the new, second-generation Nest Hub enough that you'll take it into the bedroom, with the third outing for its Soli sensor promising sleep tracking without anything on your wrist. Still $100, the new smart display aims to replace your old clock-radio and give some fresh insight into how restful your night was, though when the lights go out there are still some questions to be answered.

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Google has revealed its new second-generation Nest Hub, speeding up the Assistant, improving audio performance, and adding a new Sleep Sensing feature. The smart display still has a 7-inch touchscreen and a fabric-covered body, and still leaves out a camera for those with privacy in mind, but Google has added in a Soli motion sensor to make things interesting in the bedroom.

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At its very early Unpacked 2021 event last week, Samsung didn't just announce a new Galaxy S21 smartphone, Galaxy Buds Pro earbuds, and Galaxy Smart Tag trackers. It also announced a collaboration that made sense but few probably expected would ever happen. Samsung revealed that it was nurturing a closer relationship with Google, even in areas where they have competing products, bridging the gap between Samsung's SmartThings IoT platform and Google's Nest-branded devices and Android Auto car platform.

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