[AUDIO LOGO]
TAYLOR LEHMAN: Hi, everyone.
I'm Taylor, and I'll be joined today by my colleague, Indu.
We are both product managers on the Google Home team.
At Google Home, our mission is to create
a home that takes care of the people inside it
and the world around it.
That's why we're so excited to see smart home adoption growing
faster than ever.
38% of US households own at least one smart home device.
And the average household now has over 25 connected devices.
The introduction of Matter, the latest smart home standard,
will only accelerate the overall industry growth
by bringing ease of use, openness, and choice.
Matter also reduces costs for developers,
enabling you to focus on innovation.
This is critical because realizing
the vision of the helpful home requires the innovation
that developers, like you, create.
That's why we're working hard to make Google Home the best
platform for developers so you can cost effectively
build differentiated experiences that will grow your business.
When you develop for Google Home,
you are part of one of the largest smart home ecosystems.
Smart home developers from all over the world
have enabled their devices to work with Google Home.
And we're seeing excitement from our partners
for how Matter will help them accelerate their innovation.
Developing for Google Home allows
you to reach a large and active userbase.
Google Home users have connected over 500 million devices,
and our simplified setup flow for Matter-enabled devices
built into Android allows you to reach users
on over 3 billion Android phones and tablets.
Last, but not least, when you develop for Google Home,
your device can be controlled from
our cross-platform, cross-surface Google Home
app, redesigned from the ground up
to enable users to create personalized
experiences for your products.
Building on this momentum, today we
are excited to share with you two new ways that Google
Home helps you deliver innovative solutions
for your users.
First, I'll share new tools for enabling
Android developers to enhance their app with smart home
control.
Second, Indu will share with you how
we are enabling smart home developers to build
intelligent automations that users can easily
discover and adopt, powered by Google's leading language
models.
Last year at Google I/O, we talked
about how we are entering a new era of openness
in the smart home industry.
This new era of openness is built on the Matter and Thread
standards.
Matter is the latest smart home standard
that enables compatible smart home devices to speak
a common language in the home.
It was released in October 2022, and many major brands
and platforms are supporting the development of the standard.
Shortly after the release, we enabled
many of Google's smart home devices,
from speakers and displays to the new Nest Wi-Fi Pro,
to be Matter-enabled hubs.
This allows your users to quickly and easily set up
your devices in the Google Home app.
We strive to make Android the fastest platform
to bring high-quality Matter-enabled devices
to market.
We took the first step last year by launching Fast Pair
APIs to quickly set up and share Matter-enabled devices,
simplifying the process of building apps for Matter
on Android.
Many Matter-enabled devices rely on Thread, a network standard
for reliable, scalable, and low-powered communication
in the home.
Since founding the Thread group in 2014,
we've been committed to building this standard,
including maintaining the popular OpenThread open source
project.
Thread's growth accelerated in 2022, driven by new Thread
border routers, like Nest Wi-Fi Pro,
and simplified credential management
offered by new Thread APIs in Google Play services.
Today, we are taking the next step
towards making Android the best platform for building
high-quality Matter-enabled devices by adding
device and structure access to the Google Home APIs.
These new APIs simplify the process
of building Matter-enabled devices
and gives your users more choice about where to control
and manage their devices.
As a developer, these new Google Home APIs
have three benefits for you.
First, these APIs simplify the process
of building a Matter device by no longer needing
to manage the infrastructure and security of your own Matter
fabric.
Second, these APIs enable your users
to control a Matter device outside
of the home from your app without the complexity
and cost of having to build your own cloud service.
Third, if your user adds a Matter device in the Google
Home app, you can now show the device in your app
without the user having to set it up a second time.
Let's look at an example together.
Imagine you want to build a Matter smart light bulb
and have your users control it with your own app.
To launch this product, you need to build the light bulb
hardware, manage your own Matter fabric,
build a cloud service to control your bulb remotely,
and develop your Android app.
It's a lot of work.
With the Google Home APIs, you no longer
need to manage your own fabric and run your own cloud service.
Launching your light bulb is as easy as manufacturing
the hardware and building your Android app.
Google takes care of the rest.
This both reduces your time to market
and lowers the ongoing cost of operating the light bulb.
We are excited to offer a limited number of developers
early access to test this API.
To register your interest in the private developer preview,
please visit the Google Home Developer Center.
Now I'll turn it over to Indu, who
will explain how we are enabling smart home developers to build
smart home automations that users can easily
discover and adopt.
[AUDIO LOGO]
INDU RAMAMURTHI: Thanks, Taylor.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Indu, and I'm a product manager at Google Home.
As Taylor mentioned, smart home adoption
is growing faster than ever before, which
means there are many new users coming
online and existing users adding more smart devices
to their home.
At Google, we believe that automations
are central to making the promise of a truly
helpful home a reality.
For new users, automations show them
how to make the most of their smart devices.
And for existing users, automations help manage
increasingly complex tasks, transforming reactive homes
into proactive homes that can help take care of the home
and the people inside them.
For example, many users have told us
that they want peace of mind that their home is
safe and secure all the time.
What if, when you and your family are away from home
and a person is detected nearby, you
could simulate occupancy by turning on lights
and playing a sound from your TV?
With the help of automations, there
is an exciting potential to address these concerns
and help protect your home.
However, we recognize that there are barriers keeping people
from automating their homes.
For example, some users don't know which automations are
possible and need inspiration.
Others understand the possibilities,
but find it difficult to turn that vision into reality.
And others know what's possible, but don't have the time
to do it themselves or don't want to spend money
to have it done for them.
So we believe that developers like you play a critical role
in solving these challenges.
Users trust your brand, so we'll make it easy
for them to discover and adopt automations with your brand
for their households.
The automations shown on this slide
are just a few examples to showcase
creative possibilities.
We'll deep dive into more complex automations
in the following slides.
With automations you can inspire your users
and make it easy for them to turn
their vision for whole-home experiences into a reality.
Plus, the problems you're passionate about solving
will extend far beyond the devices you build.
You can leverage the ecosystem of devices
across an entire home as a canvas
to create these whole-home experiences.
So what's our plan?
Well, we are building an automation platform
that enables you to innovate and differentiate with Google.
And what's in it for you?
Well, there's a lot we're making available to you.
You can get started by utilizing your tech and Google's
new tools to get access to a powerful set of capabilities,
Google intelligence, and expand your reach to millions
more users.
So let's deep dive into each of these topics,
starting with how Google's powerful set of capabilities
can help you create whole-home automation
experiences for your users.
With Google's automation platform,
you immediately get access to a broad device
ecosystem, with over 100 starters and actions,
including sensor support, object detection
capabilities, and home contexts, such as "home" and "away."
Further, our ever-growing scripting language support
includes conditions, device groups, delayed actions,
and much more.
Next, let's see how Google intelligence
can assist you in your smart home automation creation
journey.
Let's use the same peace-of-mind automation
example we referenced earlier.
Writing a script for such an automation
such as "after sunset, if someone's detected near my home
when the family's away, turn on living room lights and TV"
can quickly become complex and time consuming.
Especially when adding variations,
such as a daytime behavior to complement sunset behavior
or maybe adding devices to the automation,
like smart blinds, or perhaps even more capabilities,
like lighting effects.
So to help you easily create automations,
we are excited to announce an experimental tool using
Google's large language models.
It's like a copilot that converts the automation you
describe into a starter script that can
be customized to your needs.
This experimental feature is going to be available to you
as part of the Developer Center experience, so try it out.
And give us your feedback so we can iterate and improve.
Finally, the whole-home automation
experiences you envision and create
have the potential to reach millions of users in the Google
Home app.
To do this, simply publish the automation
templates you create, and they will
be shown to users within the Google Home app
to discover, configure, and make it their own.
We'll make sure the automations you create
are discoverable and personalized
to your users' needs through our recommendation engine.
User feedback is an integral part of these personalized
suggestions, so the more helpful automations you create,
the better the ranking gets.
Later this year, we'll share more about
when developer-created automations will show up
in the Google Home app.
Now let's walk through how you can create, test, and publish
an automation from the Developer Console.
Let's use the same peace-of-mind automation example
we discussed previously.
First, create a new automation by tapping the Create Template
button.
Next, start writing the automation script.
Our YAML-based scripting language
provides you the capability to create
any automation you can imagine using over 100 starters
and actions, Boolean logic, delayed actions, home
contexts, and more.
We realize that writing an automation script
can be complex and time consuming,
so we've simplified the process for you.
You can use the experimental script creation tool
that we reviewed earlier, which converts the automation you
describe into a starter script that can
be customized to your needs.
For even more sources of inspiration and help
getting started, we will make available to you
a repository of use cases, code snippets, and sample scripts.
Once you're done creating an automation script,
it's time to test the automation.
Here, our testing tools provide you the flexibility
to test automations in both real structures
and simulated environments.
You are now ready to publish your automation.
Google takes care of the review and certification process,
providing timely alerts if any errors are found.
It's now time to launch your automation
and make it available for users to adopt and personalize.
It's that easy.
As a quick recap, we walked through how
you can create an automation through the Developer Console
and publish it for the world to access through the Google Home
app.
Let's look at a few more examples
of automations you can create.
These are based on themes we uncovered in user research,
such as making users home safer, their days easier,
and lives more efficient and fun.
You can imagine a night watch automation
where, if a person is detected at night in the backyard,
the spotlight turns on and video starts to stream on your phone.
Or a detection alert automation, where,
if an unfamiliar face is detected near an open door,
the family gets notified, and the camera starts recording.
Perhaps a wind down automation that
responds to a voice command and checks
that all the doors are closed and locked for the night.
These were just a few examples to get you started.
There is a rich, powerful, and intelligent canvas
waiting for your innovative automation ideas.
Finally, let's see how building automations will deliver more
value to your users and brand.
As a device manufacturer, automations
deepen user engagement by providing more touchpoints
and enable new use cases for your products.
It helps users realize why they might want or need
more of your devices.
Branded automations build brand affinity
with your existing userbase.
And for new users, you can showcase helpful automations
that increase your brand's awareness.
So what can you do today?
We are planning a private developer
preview that will be available later this fall.
You can sign up today and get notified when the developer
preview is available.
The link is also in the YouTube video description.
Today's announcements are just the beginning
of how we're making Google Home the best place for smart home
developers to build, innovate, and grow.
As Taylor mentioned, we are excited about Matter and Thread
adoption by users across the industry.
We are committed to continuing to invest in its growth
with the new API for Android.
And for automations, you can reach millions of users
with the branded automations that you publish,
powered by Google's powerful and intelligent automation
platform.
Finally, to learn more about what we've announced today
and how Google continues to invest in smart homes,
visit the Google Home Developer Center.
We can't wait to see what you build with Matter
and smart home automations.
Thanks for watching, and enjoy the rest of Google I/O.
[AUDIO LOGO]