Transcript

[00:00:00] Rachid Finge Hi there, it's Rachid Finge and welcome back to the Made by Google Podcast. I'm glad you came here to join us on our journey meeting people at Google who work on our devices and services. And today we're talking about a foundational topic that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. It's the smart home, something Google has helped pioneer over the last decade or so. And now we're at the start of a new chapter, which you'll learn all about in this episode. Now, if you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe or follow our podcast so you don't miss the next ones when they appear every Thursday. So products for the Smart Home. Whether they are smart speakers that play the music we like, smart lights that set the mood or smart thermostats that lower energy bills, even smart locks that lock the door when we leave these products can improve our lives in small and large ways. But, you know, honesty zone for a second. These devices haven't always been the easiest to set up and configure. Our guests today can help us understand what we're doing about that and how we can make the smart home smarter and smarter. Please welcome directors of product management for Google Home, Karen Yao and Anish Kattukaran. Anish and Karen, welcome to the Made by Google podcast.

[00:01:18] Anish Kattukaran Hey Rashid, nice to get a chance to chat with you.

[00:01:20] Karen Yao Thanks for having us here.

[00:01:21] Rachid Finge Absolutely. Great to see you. Let's start at the beginning. How did you end up at Google? Maybe. Karen, start with you.

[00:01:27] Karen Yao Well, before I joined Google, I started out as a software engineer and I did that for a number of years. And then at Google. I first started working in ads and during that time I bought a home that had a bunch of smart home devices that were installed by the previous owner. So from nest thermostats to blinds and lights and motion sensors and security cameras. And that's when I discovered this magical thing called Smart Home. And so when I saw an opportunity to open up on the Smart home team, I jumped at it. And that’s why I’m here.

[00:01:58] Rachid Finge Wonderful. We should. We should thank the previous homeowner then to you on the team and each. How about you? How did you end up at Google?

[00:02:04] Anish Kattukaran Oh, I've had a somewhat circuitous journey here. I did not start in tech, so I actually started a nonprofit when I was in high school. After college, I did two startups and it kind of stumbled into Google after those two startups. And after a stint in ads and YouTube, I finally found my way to Google Home and Nest. I think the through line though for me is that since I was a kid, I've been super passionate about gadgets. Fun fact, in my closet today, I actually have a drawer, a couple drawers of just old gadgets that my wife, my kids and my parents all affectionately call my paperweight collection.

[00:02:38] Rachid Finge Right.

[00:02:39] Anish Kattukaran This includes everything from Walkmans to my first iPod to my first BlackBerry. You know, I had one of the first Nest Thermostats that I bought when it first came out. This was even before I was at Google. And that really sort of started me on my journey of just loving gadgets in the home. So when this opportunity came up to work at Nest and work on Smart Home is just sort of my dream job, right? I get to play, but I get to do it professionally.

[Meet the Googler]

[00:03:06] Rachid Finge That's amazing. Like a museum in your closet at home. I'd love to see that one day. My guests today are working on the future of the Smart Home. They're both directors of product management for Google Home. But it's fair to say they work together from two different ends of the spectrum. Karen Yao originally is a developer working on operating systems that just cannot fail, like the ones you'd find in ATMs. Today she works on Matter and as she’ll explain in detail. It's a new language for smart home devices to talk to each other. Anish Kattukaran first worked on Google ads and then YouTube ads. But today it's about the Google Home platform, which includes the Google Home app that I'm sure you're familiar with. Anish wants to make the smart and thoughtful home more intelligent and work for everyone, whether you're new to all of this or a smart home veteran. He'll tell you all about the future of the smart home we're working towards. And we'll also explain why there's a brand new Google Home app on the way. Talking to Karen and Anish made me feel excited about 2023. I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Listeners of the podcast know that I can check. Of course, you know this directory of all the Googlers we have and every Googler has this little mission you can write. So just wanted to check: Anish, your mission “build the most delightful and helpful experiences for the Google Home platform”. So I think most people know what Google Home is, but what's the Google Home platform?

[00:04:34] Anish Kattukaran Yeah, if you take a quick step back, part of our broader vision is to deliver the helpful home. So we talk here at Home and Nest about creating a home that takes care of the people inside it and the world around it. And what that really entails is bringing everything together for both our users and our partners. So not just the devices that we build here at Nest, right. But for all of the devices that a user might have in their home. So think of the Google Home platform as a collection of user experiences and developer tools. APIs, SDKs that Karen and my teams are building to actually make that vision a reality.

[00:05:07] Rachid Finge Great. And then speaking of developers, Karen, your highlight is “Happy, Successful, Smart Home Developer”. So tell us about that.

[00:05:13] Karen Yao Yeah. So Anish had said, our vision is to build a helpful home. And when you think about it, that's a really ambitious mission. And there is so much to do to really deliver on that. We can't really build it all ourselves, nor do we want to. And so at Google, we really love developers like we see the value that developers bring. And if you look at, for example, the developer ecosystem on Android, which is one of the world's largest mobile OS, developers bring not only scale but also a great deal of innovation. They create these experiences that you never knew existed, but then suddenly you can't live without. And so we really want to empower developers to innovate on the home experiences for people. And to do that, we have to do three things. The first is we have to give them the tools to make it easy for them to build quickly and cost effectively on Google. And then we also want to enable them to. Innovate on Google so they can create differentiated experiences for their customers. Right. And if we succeed on those, too, then we'll help them grow their businesses on Google by reaching more customers and deepening their engagement with their existing customers.

[00:06:25] Rachid Finge Perfect. So normally at the end of the podcast, we talk about the future, but I thought maybe it's interesting to talk about that right now because the smart home is on a journey. And I'm really wondering, where are we going to? Anish, what is the ultimate smart home like? And I'll ask Karen the same question later.

[00:06:42] Anish Kattukaran Yeah. Like, listen to the term smart home in and of itself is sort of a loaded term. And I think we've been through an evolution where our devices, many of the appliances in our home have gone from being, quote unquote, dumb. Right? They sort of all operate independently to then being connected to the Internet. And even just that next phase of being connected to the Internet meant you could do things that you could not do previously. Right? You could control things from your phone, but still very contained to that particular device. You know, as I think about the next phase of where we're going, it's really less about an individual device like your kettle being able to be connected to the Internet. And really what it's about is bringing all of the devices in your home into this even playing field where they can all work well together. And when you do that, that's when you start to be able to realize that vision that I mentioned earlier about this helpful home. It's really only helpful if they can all speak to each other, actually make your life a little bit better to make your life a little bit easier, to make you feel a little bit more safe and secure. That's what the promise of the Smart home is. It's not just, Can I control it from my app? But really, does it make your life better, easier, simpler, safer? And then once we get to that point, that's when we actually realize this overarching vision for a smart home and the helpful home.

[00:07:59] Rachid Finge And Karen, how far along on this journey are we, do you think?

[00:08:03] Karen Yao I would say we're in the beginning phases. There's a lot of potential for us to come and we'll talk about this later. But there's a launch of this new standard called Matter. And we think that that will really set the stage for unprecedented growth and innovation.

[00:08:18] Rachid Finge So we'll get to Matter in a minute. Definitely. I think as Anish said, that smart, home loaded term, I'll probably hear people talk about The Jetsons all the time, right? You know, robot butlers, all these kinds of things.

[00:08:29] Anish Kattukaran So I'm ready for it. One of my favorite cartoons as a kid. That's why. That's why I'm here. Just doing that. Right. Yeah.

[00:08:35] Rachid Finge We want to recreate the Jetsons in a way, I guess. So when is a home, a smart home? Like if I have a smart speaker and a smart light, am I now a smart home user? Customer? Is that like the minimum to be a smart home? How should I look at this?

[00:08:49] Anish Kattukaran Yeah, I think in today's context, where we are today, that seems like a reasonable definition for me. Now, what Karen and I were doing was also painting the picture of where we think smart home needs to get to or where it should be or where we are going even. Right. So I think, yeah, by today's definition, if you've got one or a handful of devices that are in fact connected to the Internet, that is today's definition of smart home. We think that it can be significantly better and more helpful, and that's what we're working on.

[00:09:15] Karen Yao Yeah, and I just wanted to add to that. I think the whole Jetsons thing is very exciting, but I also really love The Flintstones. And so I think the real potential of the smart home happens when we take ordinary items and we make them extraordinary. We're already on that path. A doorbell that is not only a doorbell, but a doorbell that tells me when a package has arrived, blinds that automatically open when I go into my family room and it's bright out. So I think that's where we'll have the most impact on people's lives, is when we bring these familiar concepts and just make them way better and more helpful.

[00:09:46] Anish Kattukaran I think what Karen's also touching around is another really interesting concept, which is if you look at the home today, you have a collection of devices that are somewhat personal, right? You've got your phone, you've got your tablet, you've got your watch. These are your computing devices that you have on you all the time. Sure. And guess what? They happen to spend a very large chunk of the time at home, but they're not home devices. Right. And then somewhat separately, there's a little bit of like a firewall almost. You've got another collection of devices that we call your smart home devices. And they all have their own languages and they live in their own apps and they kind of operate separately. And I think as you look to the future, part of this vision that Karen's describing is only something we get to when this wall between mobile computing and mobile devices and smart home devices actually breaks down where they all work interconnected daily. And you have this reality of ambient computing where you walk in the door and because your phone knows that you walked in the door, it's able to adjust things in your living room to close your blinds, like Karen just said, and adjust the lights. And that's the idea that your phone and your tablet and your kettle and your blinds and your lights all live within this same home and they can all talk to each other.

[00:11:05] Rachid Finge So what is for you guys the most profound thing that all these technologies combined, with some intelligence, of course, made possible? Because some of these things sound like they're way in the future, but maybe some of these things are actually possible today. Karen, anything you have in your home that still blows your mind when it comes to Smart home?

[00:11:25] Karen Yao Yeah. So I'm a super busy mom and I remember talking with the other moms about how hectic life is. And so for me, when I think about the smart home, I think about all the benefits it gives me. It helps me save money, for instance, right? It keeps my energy bill down. It helps me save time. It helps me to keep my family safe. But most of all, I think the smart home helps me reduce all the tedious little things that I have to worry about. Any mental burden that you have to do as you're managing your home, like when the cleaners are coming or when someone is coming to repair something. And so I find a lot of value in my home, helping me with doing all the small things so that I have more time to spend quality time with my family.

[00:12:12] Rachid Finge Right. That makes a lot of sense. It's just offloading all this cognitive load and making sure the technology takes care of it. Anish, I'm sure your BlackBerry doesn't play a role in the Smart home today. Any other devices that will help you get through your day a little bit better?

[00:12:25] Anish Kattukaran Yeah. Sadly, my love affair with my BlackBerry has since moved on. Yeah, but with two little kids, my wife and I have very different schedules every morning, and it changes every week, week to week even. So rather than basing this on sort of a fixed time every day, we actually have a rise and shine automation that effectively starts when we have a motion sensor in the room. So when that motion sensor recognizes that one of us is out of bed, instantly it starts this series of actions for us in our home that, kind of what Karen mentioned, that takes these subtle little things and just automates them and does them for us. So it automatically starts to open our living room blinds, in the kitchen, it actually starts to play some relaxing jazz from music on all of our speakers. It turns the kettle on because my wife and I really enjoy having tea in the morning. And then this last part isn't as popular, but it actually gradually starts to increase the brightness of the lights in our kids’ room. And so even before we get in there, it started to increase. It signals to them it's time to wake up or we're going to start the morning routine now.

[00:13:30] Rachid Finge Now, I am absolutely sure there are people listening and thinking I want this, but they might fear that it's only for the tech savvy to actually implement all of this. Is that true? Is the smart home still only for the tech savvy, Karen?

[00:13:43] Karen Yao Well, I think historically a smart home tends towards users who are more comfortable and enthusiastic about technology. And that has definitely evolved over time and gotten much more mainstream. But still, I think there's a lot of potential for reaching a broader audience. Right. And that starts with even how people go about buying Smart Home products. Right? Like today, you know, you go to a special section and it's the smart home area in the store. And where we really should get to is it's part of any other products that you buy. You're looking at bulbs, what smart lighting options do you have? And then I think the second part of that is there is a steeper learning curve. Currently, there are more steps involved potentially in setting up a smart device and getting it to work. And I think that's why we're so excited about this new standard that just launched recently called Matter, which is designed to help smart homes be simpler and easier to use. And so by doing that, it will reduce the friction that people face in adopting smart home technology and will bring new segments of users and new use cases to bear.

[00:14:45] Rachid Finge And I guess another part of that is the updated Google Home app that's in preview right now. How important is that app in the whole Google Home platform? Because I guess that's the first touch point that many people use. How important is it?

[00:15:01] Anish Kattukaran Yeah. Starting with your earlier question, where are we in sort of the evolution of the smart home? I guess that's how I heard that question. Yep, I think we're somewhere in the middle. I think it used to be a lot harder. It has gotten easier. We are still not at the point where it's just sort of snap your fingers easy. And so I think that's the role that I envision the Google Home app playing, which is to make something like Smart Home just so simple that you don't have to think about it. I spent the last couple of years my family, my parents, etc. loved the value of the smart home. But I have had to be the one to set it up for them. Right. So I've gone to literally every member of my family's homes and been the one that sets up every light, sets up every camera. And so I think we'll be successful when I personally don't have to be tech support for every member of my family. Right. And so if you can buy a light and just set it up and if you can buy a thermostat and just set it up and you buy a camera and just set it up yourself without having to have someone that's technical or anything like that do it. That's great. And that's the role that I see the home app playing over time, right, no Matter which Karen was talking about, was to standardize how all these devices talk to each other. The layer on top of that is where Google Home then says, okay, great. Assuming that all these devices can talk to each other, how do we make it super, super simple to get it set up? How do we make it really, really simple to control them? How do we make it really, really simple to bring all of those devices, whether they're Nest devices or devices, from any one of hundreds or thousands of other manufacturers into a single place where you can do all of that really easily. That's what we're trying to get to, and we think we've taken a pretty good step in that direction with the rapidly growing number of devices in users’ homes. It was very clear to us that there wasn't going to be a one size fits all model to organize your home by the devices you have in your home are probably very different than what I have. I've got a bunch of lights and I've got some cameras. You might have a fridge, you might have some blinds and a kettle. So there really wasn't going to be a way that Google would be able to say, hey, you know, this is the model for your home. You spent so much time today designing your own physical home to represent you and reflect what you have in your home. And we wanted that to be true for the app as well, where everyone was able to set up their home and the devices in their home to suit their unique needs. So we ended up focusing on four things. So we said, we want a beautiful home, this app for all of your devices organized by you. We wanted to have a really delightful and immersive camera experience. You know, so a big part of our heritage and our legacy is we've built these beautiful cameras and this camera experience from Nest, and we wanted to bring that into Google home. The third one was really just making it smarter and easier and more helpful with automations. Right. So you've got smart devices, but the magic really happens when each of those individual smart devices can combine to do something a little bit more helpful. And then the last piece of this whole rebuild and redesign was to make sure that your home was on more surfaces when you need it most. So you didn't have to always go to your phone. For example, if you're out on a run and you want to make sure the home is cool when you're back, you can adjust your thermostat directly from your wrist on your watch.

[Made by Numbers]

[00:18:07] Rachid Finge Amazing. And really waiting for those automations. I noticed my coffee maker appeared in the new Google Home app, so I just got to link it to my alarm clock, I guess, and I'll be all set, so. All right. We'll dive into Matter soon. But first we get into Made by Numbers, which is the section we have in every Made by Google podcast, where we ask our guests to bring a number that is either important to them or to the work they do at Google. So wondering probably both of you brought a number along. Karen, what is the number you brought for this episode?

[00:18:35] Karen Yao Yeah. So the number that I thought was very inspiring is 80,000. So 80,000 is the number of devices that carry the works of Google Badge. And with Matter, that number will grow. And so I love this number because it shows the limitless potential for transforming the whole home experiences for users and improving their quality of their lives in ways that we have never thought of before. And this is something that we can deliver together with our developers. And so that's exciting to me as a product manager, and that's part of what makes my job so rewarding, is that we can improve people's lives. And at the same time, I think 80,000 shows the complexity that we need to tackle to deliver a seamless experience to users. And that's where our vision for ambient computing comes in. Giving users the ability, as it is just talked about, to seamlessly interact with their homes across many surfaces.

[00:19:28] Rachid Finge Right. So 80,000 might sound like a lot, but it's only the beginning, right? Maybe if we have another episode a year from now, that number will be quite a bit bigger. Aneesh, what's the number you brought to this episode?

[00:19:40] Anish Kattukaran I brought 25.

[00:19:42] Rachid Finge Just 25.

[00:19:43] Anish Kattukaran Just 25. But let me put that into context. So 25, because when we built the Google Home app nearly ten years ago, our average user had fewer than three smart devices. Right. And what we found in a recent study is that the average US household now has over 25 connected devices and it's actually growing dramatically fast. It's not that this was gradual, from 3 to 25. I think it's something like more than doubled in the last like two, three years. So it’s just like a massively accelerated trajectory. And again, with matter, most of your devices will just start to become smart without you even having to think about it. So we're fully expecting that number to just change and continue to grow pretty dramatically.

[00:20:28] Rachid Finge All right. Well, the word Matter dropped so many times now. We got to dove into that Matter launched, I think, a couple of weeks ago. Now, first, Karen, I have to ask you, are you sick and tired of all the word play on the word matter?

[00:20:39] Karen Yao No, not at all. Because Matter really matters.

[00:20:42] Anish Kattukaran Right.

[00:20:43] Rachid Finge I didn't want to say, but I'm glad you did so well. Let's get right into it then. What is Matter and why is it so important?

[00:20:50] Karen Yao Yes. So Matter is a universal connectivity standard created by a consortium of hundreds of companies as part of the Connectivity Standards Alliance or CSA. Google is very active in this consortium, which also includes companies such as Amazon, Apple, Smartthings, and many device manufacturers. So all of us came together with a commitment to basically improve the smart home experience for our users. So you can think of matter as a common language for how smart home devices can talk directly to each other over Wi-Fi or thread. Bluetooth is also involved if you're bringing a new device into the matter network in your home. Mm hmm. At its essence, matter is a set of protocols that guarantees your smart home devices will be able to communicate with each other. And so even if they're not made by the same company, they'll work well together. So as long as you have a device that is certified for Matter, then you know that it will work with any platform that supports Matter. So that's going to really simplify the buying process for users, right? Currently, users have to think about it when they're buying a new device. They need to think about the system they have at home. Is it a Google home? Is it Amazon, Alexa? And then they need to find a device that works with that platform. And now they have the assurance that if it works with matter, it works with their system at home, as long as their system at home supports Matter. And then there are other benefits, too, Matter as a local protocol. And so that means we don't have to go out to the cloud to ask the partner to, let's say, turn off the lights in a user's home. And so then that improves the speed and the responsiveness of the experience, as well as the reliability. And then because I'm the developer lead PM, I also have to mention developers and matter is game changing for developers because previously if you were building a device and you wanted to integrate with Google and you want to integrate with Alexa and Apple, you basically had to do all those integrations separately so that your device could speak those different languages, and now you only need to build once to the matter standard. And that frees up your time so you can focus on innovating and building great new features for your users.

[00:22:58] Rachid Finge All right. So the one language to rule them all, easier for developers, easier for me as a consumer, because I just go out and buy a Matter thing and that's all I need to think about. So that's great. But what we discussed previously is also for me as a user can be pretty hard sometimes to install devices currently. Is Matter going to help change that as well to set up the devices once I bought them.

[00:23:19] Karen Yao Yeah, absolutely. So beyond interoperability, I think if you look at how Google adding support for matter setup is a big part of our strategy. Right. So our goal is to make smart home setup and connectivity work simply and consistently across every Android device. So we've integrated setup into the operating system itself, which runs on 3 billion phones, tablets and other devices. And we've also integrated it into Android Fastpair. So when the user just plugs in their device, the phone will say, Hey, we've detected that you've plugged in advice, would you like to set it up? And the user can set that device up with just a few taps.

[00:24:00] Rachid Finge Is that like when I get my pixel buds pro out and my phone says, Hey, you got new earphones? That's the way it works?

[00:24:06] Karen Yao Exactly. It's the same mechanism with fastpair.

[00:24:09] Rachid Finge That's great. And then Karen and you're like two teams working together in a way, one of you working on the Matter standard and making sure Google works well with it. And then Anish, you need to make sure that everything that matter does appears in the Google Home app for me as a user to be able to use it.

[00:24:24] Anish Kattukaran Yeah, absolutely. Home app Android across generally across our ecosystem. For me, obviously, Karen and her team are just these deep experts on Matter. Working together is the first step, getting smarter and more helpful? That's where we want to get to. Right. And so Matter will help us take that first step. But then how we enable automations, these and intelligence and how these devices talk to each other so that when my body is feeling a little bit hot. Yeah, I've got a smart watch. It can tell the temperature of my body and I've got a smart thermostat, which I can adjust the temperature in my room. But what we want to get to is my watch figures out that I'm kind of warm just without me thinking about it, adjusts my thermostat, makes me more comfortable. That's what I want in the Smart Home is I just want to feel comfortable. I don't want a bunch of smart devices per se. So that's the kind of stuff that we are trying to build, right? Like we're going to build a standard which is going to take a lot of effort. And the experience as you build off of that are these sort of magical things where you don't have to think about it and your needs are just met.

[00:25:23] Rachid Finge Right. Now, I get also why you said earlier that we're really in the early stages of Smart Home, right? So now we're having that standard one language for everyone who is participating in the Smart home. And then once we have those ducks in a row, we can truly work on the intelligence now. Karen, what I'm wondering is working with so many companies to create this one language, what was that like? It seems to me might be hard, maybe in a way so many different companies with different interests and different roles to play. How do you get everyone on the same page and have everyone speak the same language?

[00:25:56] Karen Yao Yeah, that is so true. I mean, even if you look within a company in our job as product managers, getting everyone in a room to, say ten people to agree, is challenging. And so how do you do that when it's hundreds of companies? Many of them potentially compete with each other, but they don't normally work together. And so I think the ambition of what we were trying to do here, right, unifying the language of how all these devices work together. That was so compelling that it basically rallied the whole industry. And there have been times when it was bumpy, but in the end we did it and Matter launched officially last week.

[00:26:36] Rachid Finge So now help me understand, I do have a Nest Hub. I have the new Nest Wi-Fi Pro and it also supports Thread I think. And I'm confused like what is that and why does that matter? I suppose.

[00:26:49] Karen Yao Yes. So Matter is a protocol that will work on top of Wi-Fi and Thread. Okay. So Thread is a wireless protocol for the smart home that allows devices to talk directly with each other. And interestingly, I think Time magazine announced that Thread was one of the best intentions of 2022. So Thread has been around since 2015 and Google was one of the founding companies in Thread and we've been using it and millions of our deployed products since 2017. And so we're super excited to see the adoption of Thread starting to expand rapidly. So how does Thread differ from Wi-Fi? Thread is used for low bandwidth devices, typically battery powered such as locks and sensors, whereas Wi-Fi is used for high bandwidth devices such as cameras. So there are several benefits to Thread. They're ideal for devices that are battery powered that just want to sleep for a long time, wake up, do something, and then go back to sleep so that they can kind of preserve the battery life. And so this low power protocol from thread really helps achieve that battery life. And then secondly, Thread creates a mesh network with your devices. So there is no single point of failure and that leads to better reliability and latency.

[00:28:04] Rachid Finge Right. Okay. So I don't want to have my Nest cam run on Thread probably, but many other devices might not need to be recharged every so often. Because of Thread.

[00:28:13] Karen Yao Exactly. You don't want to be changing the batteries on your locks or sensors all the time.

[00:28:17] Rachid Finge That's right. So, you know, we started a conversation about the future of Smart Home. Maybe we can go back to that future again. And Anish, I know you mentioned this intelligence layer on top of all the devices that work together. So how do we get there once Matter is something that we all use. How do you get to that next step?

[00:28:35] Anish Kattukaran We talked a little bit about how this evolution that we're seeing in the home, right. So devices went from not connected to connected. So today, when we say smart home, for the most part, you're talking about, hey, my kettle is now connected to the Internet, my dryer is now connected to the Internet, my Roomba is connected to the Internet. And what that means is I can go into an app somewhere, press a button, and it turns it on. Mm hmm. Awesome. Right. That's still really, really cool. Right? The fact that I could be on vacation, I could turn my lights on just to simulate that I'm home. The intelligence happens when all of these devices can talk to each other and they can do things proactively. Right. Like your needs of the home are still pretty fundamental. Like when you ask people, Oh, do you want a smart home? A good chunk of people are like, Well, what I want is to feel safe. What I want is to feel comfortable. What I want is something to help me just do some of the basic things. I can spend more time on the things I care about. So. So when Karen and our teams are thinking about this, we want the home to be helpful. We wanted to be proactive. So to get there, it's being able to say, as I mentioned earlier, I've got a Pixel Watch that can measure the temperature of my body. I've got a Nest Thermostat that can adjust the temperature and here smart intelligence is being able to figure out without me even thinking about it. I'm sitting on the couch watching TV. Oh, you know what an issue is? Getting a little bit warm. Let's adjust the thermostat down to 68, just without me thinking about it. That's the kind of intelligence that to me is proactive. It's the smart home that's helpful for you. That's what we're trying to get to.

[00:30:04] Rachid Finge Karen, what about support for Matter at Google? Do we have anything to say about when our devices will support it as of fairly soon? Anything to say there?

[00:30:13] Karen Yao Oh, yes. So our devices will definitely support Matter on a variety of dimensions. So if you look at a Google user, a Google home user, we want to ensure that they're ready for these Matter devices when they start appearing on shelves or when your existing devices are upgraded to matter. Right. And so we will be adding support to nearly all Nest speakers, displays and Nest Wi-Fi to support Matter. So this means that they can then talk to a Matter device and control it. And we've also enabled Thread border router support in many of these hubs and that includes Nest Hub, Max Nest Hub Second Gen and also Nest Wi-Fi. And then on the receiving end of the command, so these are the end devices will be enabling matter support in our thermostats. Now the Matter standard it's taken its first step. Right. And so it doesn't cover all of the numerous device types that are out there. So the first set will cover things like sensors, locks, thermostats, lights and blinds. And so as the consortium adds support for more device types, then we will think about how to support them in the NEST products that are part of those end devices.

[Top Tips for the Road]

[00:31:26] Rachid Finge Right. I guess it's like a real language. It evolves over time, right? That will be able to support more going down the line. All right. We've reached the top tips for the road where we ask our guests to bring our listeners Top Tips on any topic they like. I'm really wondering, starting with you, Karen, any kind of tips you thought about for this episode?

[00:31:49] Karen Yao Yeah, I think when you think about the smart home, the realm of possibilities are so vast in how users can automate their homes. And so in a sense, I was thinking about this. Everyone becomes a product manager in their own home where their customers are, the other people in their home, such as their families, their spouse, their kids. And so my top tip of the day is to enlist your family to come up with interesting ways to automate your home and to also show them how to build and adjust these automations when they're not quite right. That way, everyone can benefit the most from Smart Home. So there have been times, for example, when I've been working from home, it's quiet, and then suddenly a voice comes on over my Google home speaker reminding me to do something that my kid wanted me to do. And she set that up. And it's actually pretty funny, but it's actually pretty helpful. So that would be my top tip of the day.

[00:32:44] Rachid Finge That is great and I feel great knowing that I am, too, a product manager in a way in my own home, because that's definitely the case. And Anish, any top tips from you?

[00:32:53] Anish Kattukaran One tip that I had was I've a three and a half year old and a two year old. Right. And they are probably more familiar with some of the smart devices in my home than other parts of my family who are significantly older. So my top tip is if you've got a smart display that can control all of your lights and your blinds, probably put it out of reach of your three year old so they know what they're doing. But yeah, jokes aside, my top tip to folks would be in the context of Google Home, go try stuff out there. We are listening, give us feedback. We want to make sure that we're building these phenomenal experiences for you. And so my top tip is sign up for public preview. Some things would be great, we hope, and then other things will be things that we'll work on, share that feedback, and then we're going to make things better for you.

[00:33:40] Rachid Finge Well, it sounds like there is a new chapter for the Smart home coming in 2023, thanks to the new Google Home app and thanks to Matter. So Karen and Anish, thank you so much for joining the Made by Google Podcast.

[00:33:51] Karen Yao Thank you so much for having us, Rachid.

[00:33:53] Anish Kattukaran Yeah, Rachid, this has been super fun.

[00:33:55] Rachid Finge Well, I don't know about you, but I cannot wait for my smart home devices to get software updates for Matter and see how my home will get faster, more secure and more intelligent over time, as well. So a big thank you to the hard work of Karen and Anish and their teams. And let's not forget the whole community of companies and developers that are making Matter come to life. Oh, wow. And wow, I said all of that without a pun. So matter of fact, join us next week on another episode of the Made by Google podcast. And we'll talk about a topic that's really important but too often forgotten: accessibility. Technology is at its best when everyone can use it. So let's find out how AI can help with that. Simply subscribe or follow the made by Google Podcasts and you'll hear from me again next Thursday. Take care. Wherever you are, talk to you soon again. Bye bye.