Hey YouTube, I'm Tristan from Smart Home Point.
I was recently filming another video where I've mentioned the phrase 'Google
Home' a few times, and I realized midway
through the video but I hadn't actually explained
what 'Google Home' means and why it can mean four different things
in each context. The phrase 'Google Home' can be a little bit confusing...
as a result, I - sort of - got sidetracked on that other video while I was trying to
- sort of - manually explain what 'Google Home' meant. I was getting confused, just
like crying, it was just terrible, it was a whole thing.
I'm joking... I didn't cry... much. Uhm, the point is the phrase 'Google Home' can
be a little bit confusing because it means multiple things in different
contexts and that's a little bit confusing so I want to do this video and
just talk through why the phrase 'Google Home' means four
different things, and how hopefully in the future it'll only mean one or two
different things, and therefore be a little bit less
confusing. Okay so part of the confusion of the phrase
'Google Home' is that it refers to a brand name - a lineup of products -
it refers to a particular product, it refers to the start of the name of two
other products, and of course it refers to the app - the
Google Home app, that you can download on the app stores.
And as a result it gets a bit confusing. Now before I go any further,
what I will say is that you if you have a Google Nest Mini or Google Nest
Max, or whatever Google Nest device you have, if you read that
another product or a skill works on 'Google Home',
you're in luck - it will work on this particular product. And that's because
'Google Home' is a brand name. As I just mentioned, my first point is it's a brand
name for a particular lineup of products. The
lineup of products includes the Google Home, the Google Home
Mini, the Google Home Hub, the Google Home Max, the Google Nest Mini,
the Google Nest Hub and the Google Nest Hub
Max. Okay so when something says it supports 'Google Home',
if you've got any of those devices it will work, including if that device is
just called Google Nest or Google Nest Hub, for
example. It will work. Now the brand name Google Home
officially has been superseded by the name
'Google Nest', and that's a good thing because it'll prevent confusion.
It'll be a bit more like Amazon which has an Echo as the brand name,
and then Alexa is the name of the app. And that's great, other than the fact
that if you actually go through Google's website you'll see that the brand name
Google Nest isn't used all that often. In fact, Google Home is still used more.
For example if you're on the Google store, you see a nice little button on
the menu say Nest and you click on that and then Google
Home is listed three times, which is confusing.
Equally if you actually click into the individual products, whilst the Google
Home is no longer sold - which I'll talk about
in a second - the Google Home mini and the Google Home max is still
being sold, so obviously the Google Home brand is alive and kicking on Google's
own store. Equally if you go to the Google Home
skill page or the Google Nest skill page and look up a particular skill,
you might want, it says clear as day, "is available and is supported on Google
Home". So even though the official brand name
is Google Nest, it still says Google Home, it actually has a little icon showing
Google Home which is pretty confusing. So to finish
my first point, the brand name has officially moved over
from Google Home to Google Nest, but in reality it hasn't really done
that. It's a confusing mess of both! Okay, the second thing that the phrase
Google Home can refer to is a product. It was Google's flagship
smart home product, it was released in November 2016 and it's a smart speaker
to rival the Amazon Echo. It's a perfectly good device, it was
however discontinued earlier this year - earlier in 2020 -
to make way for the Nest Hub and the Nest Hub Max.
Uhm, but it's a perfectly good product and if you already own it - or you've bought
it second hand - it will continue to work, which in itself
is confusing because it's discontinued but yet it still works, and that's sort
of keeping this Google Home confusion alive, in my
opinion. It's even more confusing because Google purchased Nest in 2014 -
two and a half years, or more than two and a half years, before they actually
released their Google Home product - so Google back then had a chance
to actually avoid confusion about the Google name,
the Google Home phrasing, and Google Home naming.
But they didn't take it. Instead they named the flagship product Google Home,
instead of Google Nest, and as a result is this confusion surrounding
the brand name, because it's also a product.
The third thing the Google Home can mean is the name of other
products. So as I mentioned earlier, you've got the Google Home Mini and
Google Home Max, and these are still being sold. As a
result of that, they're keeping the Google Home brand and the Google Home
product range alive. Uhm to be honest, my hunch is
that in the future the Google Home Mini will be
discontinued, because you've got the Google Nest Mini which is newer and a
better overall product. Equally - same as the Google Home Max -
there's some, you know the Google Nest Hub Max, you know is better, and as a
result I can imagine that the Google Home
Max will actually be deprecated or removed in the future, and at that point
the Google Home phrase will become a lot less confusing because it no longer
refers to a product or product line up, or the start of the
name of other products! So hopefully that'll help improve things
and hopefully help reduce confusion. Finally the fourth thing that
Google Home refers to is of course the name of the app. If you
want to control your Google based smart home,
you'll download the Google Home app and in there you can manage your smart
speakers, your Nest thermostat and a load of other
devices. Now this makes sense - it makes sense for Google
to name this smart home app Google Home, but what doesn't make as much sense
is that the brand name is officially moved to Google Nest,
and of course there's a Nest app, so you think logically Google might actually
want to move things features away from the Google Home app
towards the Nest app, maybe rename it Google Nest, and then the
Google Nest app will become the primary thing -
which reinforces the brand name of Google Nest. But that's not what Google
have done. In fact they've done the exact opposite -
they've taken features from the Nest app and they supported them bit by bit in
the Google Home app. in fact around a week ago the Nest
protect product was finally added as a feature
on the Google Home app, which is great but it does nonetheless reinforce this
confusion around the Google Nest brand name,
because the actual app - the features in the apps - are moving from
Nest app to Google Home app. so in conclusion,
it's a little bit confusing. At times I'm just baffled as to why Google have
actually named things as they have, and allowed things to progress
as they have, because at the end of the day Amazon have a very clear branding
strategy. Their smart speakers are called Echo and
that's a lineup of products, and then you've got
Google... and then you've got the Alexa app. On the
other hand, you've got Google who are actually doing the exact opposite. They
bought Nest back in 2014, and then they released
their flagship product two and a half years later - in November
2016 - and they called it Google Home all the while - sort of - said planning to
actually change the brand name from Google Home to Google Nest, so you'd
think that they could just rename the flagship product at that time.
And as I said earlier they've also moved in features from the Nest app to the
Google Home app, which is confusing. I think Google
probably are looking to resolve this - sort of - confusion and they're probably
looking to get rid of any Google Home based
products, and then at that point you'll simply have a Google Home
app, and you'll have the Google Nest brand name, and I think at that point
they're going to change their website to make it a bit clearer that you've got
Google Nest as the brand name - is the product lineup -
then you've got Google Home as the app, and I think that'll be a much
better thing, but right now it is a bit confusing.
Uhm, it's yeah it's just confusing... there's no other word for it!
Okay I hope that still makes sense! I'm being in a bit of a grumpy mood and
living up to my t-shirt, but Google Home as a phrase... it's confusing
right now. It means four different things, but I hope you enjoyed this video. If you
did, please click the thumbs up button and don't forget to subscribe.
Thank you!