The Nest Smart Home Ecosystem is changing.

The Nest smart home ecosystem as we’ve come to know it is now dead.

At Google I/O last week, Google made a number of announcements around the Nest family of products. Nest, as an independent unit within Google, has been completely subsumed. There are no more Nest-branded products — everything is Google Nest.

It’s not exactly surprising that Google would choose to extend its own brand across Nest products. But the company is doing it by breaking its previous compatibility and branding programs, ensuring that anyone who invested in a smart home built around a Nest thermostat now faces an uncertain future.

THIRD PARTY APPS WILL NO LONGER WORK WITH NEST

Lutron, a leader in lighting control has emailed customers, telling them “the ability to automate lighting functions based on the Nest’s home and away status, person alerts from Nest cameras, or smoke or carbon monoxide detection from a Nest Protect will be affected by the change. It will also remove the ability to control the Nest thermostat from within the Lutron smartphone app.”

UNIFIED THIRD-PARTY APP PLATFORM AND DATA STORAGE CHANGES

When Google initially bought Nest, a promise was made to users that Nest data and Google date would be stored separately. That appears to be changing as Google has warned users that by not migrating to a Google account, the user would risk losing access to new and better-connected experiences. Google states on their website: “We strongly recommend account migration to Google for all of our users. Having a single account will also enable Nest and Google Home devices and services to work more seamlessly together. Google new FAQ can be read here on the Nest website.

The reactions to these changes have not been positive. In addition to breaking the existing smart home ecosystems that users have created for themselves, users are expressing concern over the combination of Google and Nest data.

Here at A & E we understand that new technology always comes with some level of risk. We choose our brands and partners very carefully and after considering many factors including security, support, integration, and compliance with international security protocol. We utilize only trained professional installers to protect the consumer.

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