zlacker

> OR just stay in one company's walled garden and you're fine

Google wants to have a word with you about some of the products it's sold and quickly killed.

>>inetkn+(OP)
yeah i've been in the google/nest garden for years ... yes the dual apps are weird and that's probably because Google Home does too much already that they had to keep the Nest app but nothing has stopped working for me nor gotten any emails telling me they are sunsetting something.

>>twism+J1
back in April, Google announced cancellation of several home products. dont know if they sent an email but they have a blog post.

> starting April 8, 2024 support will stop for Nest Secure

> stop support for Dropcam starting April 8, 2024.

> we will officially end Works with Nest as of September 29, 2023.

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Blog/An-update-for-ou...

>>twism+J1
3rd party "Works with google home" stuff will often stop getting updated causing more and more functionality to break over time. Admittedly this is an issue you can avoid by entirely buying the products actually made by Google, or at least carefully selecting third parties, but a huge amount of smarthome stuff is going to be rendered non-functional because of this sort of thing.

I do think the 1st party Google Home stuff is supported well enough, and I don't think any of Google's competitors in the smarthome space are really offering anything that's obviously more compelling. I mostly recommend people either go with big brands or something that can be flashed with tasmota, pick your poison.

>>inetkn+(OP)
Fair enough, I've generally gone with cheaper lower end products and some of them EoL, some die, but I write that off as a nature of playing with more little computers than my ancestors could have ever imagined.

It probably is important to note that like many modern tech systems, they aren't "hands free" automation. Patches come out, things desync from the network, etc.