Google Smart Home hat zahlreiche Beschwerden wegen Ausfällen erhalten. Wird das intelligente Heimautomationssystem zu einem "verzichteten Spielstein" für Google?

Recently, a large number of Google Smart Home customers in the United States have been constantly complaining that Google Home and Google Nest tools seem to be becoming increasingly unreliable, with more and more errors. Many users are venting their dissatisfaction with Google's abandonment of the smart home ecosystem. These signs indicate that Google is making important adjustments in its smart home field, and also reflect the current technological iteration trend of the smart home industry.

The malfunctions of Google Smart Home are not isolated cases

Since the end of last month, Google Home users have been expressing their dissatisfaction on online forums, reporting a series of problems such as device disconnection and failure to execute commands. Among them, some users reported that 90% of their Smart Life light bulbs had lost connection, and the eufy doorbell and Tapo camera had also malfunctioned.

One user described that the function of playing white noise in their child's room, which they used to use frequently, now only plays the sound in the room where they are. Another user described that when asking about the weather, the results would vary depending on who was speaking at home. Some users also reported some strange malfunctions. For example, whenever they asked the Google device to turn off the fan, it would turn off all the lights, or when they simply asked to turn off the bedroom light, the Google device would turn off all the lights in and around their home.

A forum summarized many problems with Google Smart Home, including commands not working, automation operations being interrupted, audio and video streaming being unavailable, devices going offline, being unable to communicate with each other or responding very slowly. These malfunctions are basically simple functional commands that used to work smoothly, but now have become unstable or completely inoperable for many people.

Regardless of the reason, these malfunctions are not isolated cases or individual complaints, but have obviously affected the overall ecological experience of Google Smart Home. Numerous complaints have prompted Google's official confirmation. Relevant executives admitted that they had noticed the problems when accessing certain devices in the Google Home app and promised to provide updated information in a timely manner. The latest news shows that Google is actively promoting significant improvements and plans to announce more details in the fall to solve the reliability problems of smart home devices.

Google will not "abandon" the smart home, but will accelerate the transformation

Does Google intend to abandon its smart home-related products? Google does have a history of being highly interested in a certain product but then abandoning it, including the Chromecast device and Google Stadia. In the case of IoT products, a typical example is the abandonment of the IoT platform.

In August 2022, Google Cloud suddenly issued a statement on its official website: Google Cloud IoT Core will stop serving on August 16, 2023. As an IoT platform service launched by a global leading Internet company, the shutdown of Google Cloud IoT Core caused quite a stir in the industry. From the official launch of the commercial version of IoT Core in February 2018 to its shutdown on August 16, 2023, this most important IoT product of Google only survived for 5 years.

The sudden withdrawal of Google Cloud IoT Core from service will have obvious negative impacts on Google itself. Some customers wrote that Google Cloud is going "backward". Others pointed out that Google Cloud's withdrawal from the IoT Core service is the second biggest fear after a ransomware attack. It's hard to imagine that anyone will trust Google's IoT products again. For themselves, when developing any future products, they will put Google at the bottom of the cooperation list and ensure there is an alternative.

Can the series of malfunctions of Google's smart home products this time be regarded as a signal that Google will "abandon" the smart home? From the current situation, it seems that Google has not reached the point of abandoning the smart home. However, the tech giant will promote important innovations in smart home products.

The exact cause of these problems faced by Google Smart Home this time is still unclear, but the common theme is that Google's smart home hardware devices, especially some older models, seem to be getting worse over time. Some users suspect that the update related to Google's upcoming Gemini integration is the culprit, while others think it may be a deliberate move to phase out old hardware in favor of new devices.

In April this year, Google announced that starting from October 25, 2025, it will no longer provide software updates for the first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat released in 2011 and the second-generation Nest Learning Thermostat released in 2012. In addition, Google will completely stop launching new Nest products in Europe, which means that European users will not be able to purchase or upgrade existing Nest devices in the future.

IoT practitioners are no strangers to Nest. In January 2014, Google acquired the smart home device manufacturer Nest for $3.2 billion. This acquisition marked Google's official entry into the smart home field and an important step in IoT technology. The acquisition of Nest not only affected Google itself. As a leading enterprise at that time, it became a benchmark for the development of the IoT industry. Driven by this event, a wave of global IoT innovation and entrepreneurship emerged.

At that time, Nest launched a smart thermostat. Since its first release in 2011, it has won wide recognition globally for its innovative technology and user experience. This thermostat can automatically adjust the indoor temperature by learning users' daily habits and preferences, thus achieving an energy-saving and comfortable living environment. After Google acquired Nest, it had high hopes for it, but the subsequent development did not meet expectations. In the following development process, Google's "product graveyard" added several Nest series products. In addition to the thermostat products that have stopped being updated this time, they also include the Nest Protect smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and the Nest x Yale smart lock.

The smart home is the core carrier of the consumer IoT. As a global leading platform manufacturer, it is believed that Google will not abandon this important user touchpoint. In the author's opinion, the malfunction event of Google's smart home products this time largely reflects Google's path of accelerating transformation in this field and also reflects some trends in the development of the smart home industry.

Firstly, it reflects Google's strategic adjustment to accelerate technological iteration in the smart home field.

According to user feedback, most of the malfunctions of Google Smart Home this time are concentrated on old devices. These hardware devices have been in operation for several years or even more than a decade and are in need of replacement. As consumer electronic products, smart home products are characterized by rapid technological iteration. Especially in the current context of the rapid development of various intelligent technologies, some hardware products no longer meet the current needs of users.

Google once announced externally that in the future, it will concentrate its resources on supporting the new-generation smart home ecosystem based on the Matter protocol, rather than regional hardware adaptation. As a unified protocol for smart home interconnection, the Matter protocol can achieve seamless interoperability between products of different ecosystems, breaking down the barriers between different ecosystems. Google itself is a core promoter of the Matter protocol. Supporting the smart home ecosystem based on the Matter protocol is also an important path to expand its smart home ecosystem.

Secondly, it reflects Google's support for the application scenarios of the latest AI achievements.

Some researchers suspect that the malfunctions of Google Smart Home this time are related to the integration of its large model tool, Gemini, and some problems occurred during the upgrade process. As a major product launched by Google, Gemini has become an important weapon for Google in the AI competition. Google is also exploring ways to promote Gemini to support various smart hardware products. In August last year, Google announced that it would launch Google Home functions based on Gemini AI to enable the smart home to have a better smart assistant experience.

According to Statista data, the global smart home industry market size has increased from $52.8 billion in 2018 to $154.3 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.57%. Leading platform companies such as Google and Amazon are important drivers of the development of the smart home. The actions of these manufacturers may have a significant impact on the entire industry. It is worth looking forward to how the industry will develop in the future.

This article is from the WeChat official account "IoT Think Tank" (ID: iot101). Author: Zhao Xiaofei. Republished by 36Kr with permission.