At I/O 2021, Google reiterated its commitment to Matter with a handful of smart home-related Nest and Android updates. If you need a refresher, Matter was known as Project CHIP, or Connected Home over IP, before a rebranding this past May. It’s a pact between some of the biggest companies in tech, including Google, Amazon and Apple, that aims to bring standardization to the fragmented smart home space. When it launches in the first half of 2022, it will support a variety of voice assistants and networking protocols, including Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri as well as WiFi, Thread and Bluetooth LE.
At its simplest, the promise of Matter is that you’ll be able to buy a new device and it will simply work with your existing smart home setup. To support that vision, Google is introducing new tools to help developers build and integrate Matter devices into its wider smart home ecosystem. It starts with a new but familiar name for the company’s smart home devices and developer platform: Google Home. “By bringing our platform and tools under the same roof, it gives us a simpler way to show you why and how integrating your devices with Google Home makes them more accessible and helpful across the Google ecosystem,” the company said.
As part of the rebranding, will launch a redesigned Developer Center early next year. It says the dashboard will include everything developers need to build devices and applications that work with the wider Google Home ecosystem. It will support Matter at launch and Google will release two software development kits. The first of those is a Google Home Device SDK. The company says it will be one of the fastest ways to create Matter devices. Google also plans to update Nest and Android devices to support the protocol, a move it says will enable the seamless setup of Matter devices on those platforms. Once it rolls out the update, Google claims the process of adding a new smart home will be as easy as connecting a new set of headphones. One of the other ways the company hopes to support developers is by allowing them to create their own suggested routines.
For Google, the motive for doing all of this is straightforward. The easier it can make it for third-party developers to integrate their devices and applications with Google Home, the better experience consumers will find. In turn, they’ll be more likely to invest in the company’s ecosystem.