Just like last year, CES 2024 is all about Matter – and Google is not missing anything, announcing in a blog post its plans to strengthen TVs with Matter-compatible Google Home software.
Although Google’s smart home developments, both in hardware and software, have slowed significantly in recent years, the brand played a fundamental role in creating the Matter standard.
As such, it doesn’t seem all that surprising that Google is expanding the options consumers have to set up and control their smart home; that is until you consider that this move could make Google’s own Nest hubs obsolete.
New year, new home hub
In a blog post, Google announced its plans to turn 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 LG gave 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 after announcements from Samsung that SmartThings will have an improved TV experience this year, so there’s clearly a real push to break out smart home ecosystems from the best smart speakers and the best smart displays.
Although Google briefly referenced its existing home hub hardware in the blog post, it was hardly an honorable mention in acknowledgment of their existence. Realistically, though, this announcement means that Google Home fans who aren’t particularly interested in Nest devices will no longer need one to control their smart home.
Google Graveyard-bound?
Now let’s briefly talk about the future of Google’s smart home. It’s been almost three years since we’ve seen new hubs from Google, and while for a while I was excited about the big news to come, I’m increasingly nervous – especially given some of Google’s Fitbit news this year – that there possible problems will arise for Google smart home fans.
In 2023 alone, we saw more features removed from Google’s hubs than added, especially compared to Amazon’s ever-expanding skill set and Apple’s somewhat stagnant but solid approach.
For example, the aforementioned Sleep Sensing feature was free to watch in 2023, but Google plans to integrate it into Fitbit Premium, a subscription-based service, in 2024. Support for some features on Zoom and Meet ended in September, support for Dropcam ended in April, and a host of other Google Assistant voice apps also took the hit.
There could be plenty of reasons why development has slowed in Google’s 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 Google has made in recent months.
Personally, I’m actually really excited to see TVs getting more involved in smart home shenanigans; after all, they are the central axis around which much of life at home revolves. I just hope this doesn’t come at the expense of Nest hubs.
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