SMART: Home builders ditch Nest products after Google takeover.

This year, we finally started seeing results from Nest’s 2018 demotion from a standalone Alphabet company to a merger with Google. “Nest” is no longer a line of products developed by a company or division and now seems to be a general-purpose sub-brand for any of Google’s smart home devices. We’ve seen several existing product lines be rebranded from “Google” to “Google Nest” like the Google Nest Mini (formerly the Google Home Mini), the Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub), the Nest Wifi (formerly Google Wifi), and the Google Nest Learning Thermostat (formerly the Nest Learning Thermostat).

In addition to the death of Nest the company, we’re also seeing the death of the Nest ecosystem. The “Works with Nest” smart home program is being shut down in favor of Google Assistant compatibility, and that means devices that used to communicate with Nest now work differently or not at all. Nest’s account system is also being shut down, and in the future, users will need a Google account.

Even if you’ve never had an account with Google or any of Alphabet’s other subsidiaries, you’re much deeper in with the company than you might realize.