Google Clarifies What’s Happening to “Works with Nest”

Google’s surprise announcement that it would replace its Home brand with Nest was well-received. Then all hell broke loose.

The issue here has nothing to do with branding. Instead, users became outraged when they learned that, as part of the transition from Google Home to Google Nest, Google would be killing its “Works with Nest” platform and replacing it with the existing “Works with Google Assistant” program. Works with Nest is a sort of certification program for compatibility, and the underlying platform ensures that individual Nest devices and Nest-compatible third-party devices can work together to provide seamless and automated whole-house smart home functionality.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The original plan was to shut down Works with Nest on August 31, 2019, at which time all Nest users’ carefully-constructed smart home configurations would stop working. Worse, it’s not yet possible to completely recreate these configurations in Google Home, let alone import Nest configurations. And some makers of third-party Nest-compatible devices began notifying their users that things would start to break.

“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,” an email from smart lighting firm Lutron reads, explaining the change. “It will also remove the ability to control the Nest thermostat from within the Lutron smartphone app.”

Additionally, some privacy advocates who were already not that excited that Google owned Nest in the first place complained that Google was breaking its promise to keep Nest and Google user data separate from each other.

So, Google has replied to the complaints and is adjusting its plans.

“We’re committed to supporting the integrations you value and minimizing disruptions during this transition,” Google’s Michele Turner writes. “[Now], we’ll stop accepting new Works with Nest (WWN) connections on August 31, 2019. Once your WWN functionality is available on the Works with Google Assistant (WWGA) platform you can migrate with minimal disruption from a Nest Account to a Google Account.”

WWGA, Google says, already works with over 30,000 devices from over 3,500 partners. And the firm believes that this platform’s Assistant Routines feature, which lets users customize how their smart devices work together based on simple triggers, is a suitable replacement for Nest’s broader set of built-in functionality. But Google will evolve Assistant Routines to work more like Nest.

“Later this year, we’ll bring the [WWN functionality to automatically trigger routines based on Home/Away status] to the Google Assistant and provide more device options for you to choose from,” Turner continues. “For example, you’ll be able to have your smart light bulbs automatically turn off when you leave your home. Routines can be created from the Google Home or Assistant apps, and can be created using the hardware you already own. Plus we’re making lots of improvements to setup and managing Routines to make them even easier to use.”

Google is also working with Amazon to migrate the Nest skill that lets users control their Nest thermostat and view their Nest camera livestream via Amazon Alexa.

Google has owned Nest since 2014, but it didn’t merge the Nest and Google hardware teams until 2018. Many had expected Google to eventually kill the Nest brand in favor of Google Home, but this month it did the opposite, when it killed Google Home as a hardware brand and replaced that with Nest.

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 9 comments

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    17 May, 2019 - 9:59 am

    <p>It is always nice when companies adjust plans based on user feedback, but it would be nicer if they were a little more thoughtful from the outset and worked proactively to avoid the most predictable calamities.</p>

  • dontbe evil

    17 May, 2019 - 10:04 am

    <p>glad I don't use any google service/device</p>

    • Pungkuss

      17 May, 2019 - 10:56 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#428870">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote>This was a good move. The 'works with Nest' connections allowed third parties too much personal info on user. People don't realize that by asking for privacy they are building moats in these ecosystems. Alexa will do the same soon.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • SvenJ

    17 May, 2019 - 12:05 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">'it killed Google Home as a hardware brand and replaced that with Nest'</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But, it seems to have replaced the Nest functionality and replaced it with Home's. So it seems all it kept was the name. </span></p>

  • mattbg

    Premium Member
    17 May, 2019 - 12:29 pm

    <p>Having recently done quite a lot of lighting changes at home involving dimmers and light fixtures, I briefly considered the "smart" stuff, but really couldn't justify it when I started looking at all the combinations and permutations.</p><p><br></p><p>I am very technical, but it's become somewhat of a refuge from IoT to be able to flip a light switch and have a light just work all the time with no maintenance or decision making required, and I just didn't want to give that up.</p>

  • MikeGalos

    17 May, 2019 - 1:06 pm

    <p>And this is why you ideally go with actual independent standards for device interoperability and if that's not available you go with a de facto standard where the company's actual revenue stream is tied to the ongoing cross-company success of that standard.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • nerdile

      Premium Member
      17 May, 2019 - 11:59 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#428889">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Why the down votes? Unless you want to redo your "smart" setup every year based on the whims of the major vendors, this is the right approach.</p>

  • garst

    18 May, 2019 - 7:34 am

    <p>I never used most of the integration between any of the smart home ecosystems. I just never saw much added functionality I wanted. I mean, I did connect my Google homes to nest, but never actually used it. I just preferred to program the thermostat and have a way to set it to home and away. Unfortunately the nest app completely fails at the latter half of that. In fact, there were times where I would go into the nest app and explicitly set it to away, but then the app would glitch out and not be able to tell where I was and set it back to home. So I actually turned off location settings because it worked anyways. I'm hoping Google keeps the scheduling functions (although it can use some UI tweaks to make it easier to set up) and makes it easier to set home and away by telling whatever smart assistant you might have. Although I would not be opposed to using my phone's location to set home and away if it works reliably.</p>

  • velevobowi

    24 July, 2019 - 7:36 am

    <p>came across this post , here is what the <a href="https://telegraphstar.com/google-nest-hub-review-after-a-week/&quot; target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">telegraph star reviews</a> about google nest hub</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC