Control support for the Google Home smart speaker and its Google Assistant has been quietly expanding in recent times, having now reached exactly 62 partners which are now listed in the Home Control menu of the Google Home Android app, as evidenced by the gallery below. The app itself lists 33 products and services that still can’t be seen on the official Google Home Help pages from the company, including solutions like Kasia Home, Netatmo, Gigaset Elements, Sensibo, Honeywell, Yeelight Actions, HomeSeer, and many more. Not all of the names that Google has yet to add to its product help pages joined the company’s home automation ecosystem this month as some like Yeelight have been available since early summer but the platform as a whole is still apparently growing at a steady pace and has been adding services much faster than Google has been refreshing its support pages.
The Google Home lineup was recently ennobled with the additions of the Google Home Mini and Google Home Max, the latter of which still isn’t commercially available and is set to hit the market next month, seeking to compete with premium offerings from the likes of Sonos and Apple. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant has been hard at work trying to expand its business to consumer electronics in recent years, with the Google Home lineup being an important component of that strategy due to its synergy with the firm’s growing artificial intelligence ambitions and its relative accessibility. Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently said that Alphabet’s subsidiary now considers itself to be “an AI-first company” and the Google Home lineup is highly reflective of its endeavors in machine learning and related technologies.
Despite its novelty factor that’s still attractive to many consumers, the only seemingly reliable way for the Google Home ecosystem to grow its user base in the long term is to continue diversifying its home automation capabilities, which is where support for third-party products and services comes into play and is an aspect of the platform that Google has been carefully nurturing in recent times. The company’s ultimate goal is to position the Google Home speakers as the ultimate smart home control hubs which offer an experience that’s both consistent and comprehensive.
