Nest is rejoining Google under the hardware team’s Rick Osterloh who now currently heads that division, following Osterloh’s previous position as head of Motorola Mobility prior to Motorola being sold off to Lenovo. Nest’s current CEO, Marwan Fawaz, will remain with Nest but will now report to Osterloh as the two companies reunite for the future of Nest’s products going forward under the Google umbrella.
The decision to bring Nest back into the fold under Google was announced today, February 7, on Google’s official ‘Keyword’ blog. Nest is still going to focus on making the home smarter by way of providing the consumer with products that safeguard the home, save energy, and make things more convenient, but under Google’s hardware team there will also be another big core focus – artificial intelligence. As noted by Osterloh, Nest and Google will be working together with a focus of making future Nest products with Google’s A.I. technology and Google Assistant at the core of those offerings, though nothing was specifically mentioned in regards to what those products would be or how exactly those technologies would be incorporated. That said it isn’t too hard to imagine how Google might plan to lump its A.I. tech, including Google Assistant, into Nest’s products.
All of Nest’s current offerings that are available on the market today are already compatible with Google Assistant, so the core focus on adding these technologies going forward likely builds upon this, perhaps by integrating it directly into some or all future devices. The changes take place today as Nest is now officially back with Google and the two already have a “head start” as Osterloh points out that both companies have already been working closely together. This doesn’t explicitly signify that there may already be something new in the works but it’s entirely possible that Google and Nest could have already been working on a product that centers around this new core focus artificial intelligence driving the functions of whatever’s to come. With this official announcement out of the way, Google upcoming I/O developer conference could be a likely time for announcing new products with Nest being part of the hardware team.