We’ve heard about the Matter smart home standard and what it can do for ages now, and things are on track to finally arrive later this year. In an interview ahead of this week’s Google I/O conference, the company teased what Matter will mean for the Google Home app going forward.
Google’s Michael Turner, Senior Director of the Google Smart Home Ecosystem, gave a preview of how the Google Home app has evolved with Matter in mind in an interview with the edge. One of the first points at which the material will be felt, according to Turner, is during preparation. Google previously previewed this faster pairing process, which includes files Pop-ups for smart home devices on Android.
Moreover, Turner also explained that latency in commands should improve with Matter. Apparently, the standard will “dramatically” reduce latency and “improve overall reliability” of smart home devices. Turner also mentioned the obvious benefit of interoperability, which is one of the most exciting parts of the article. As expected, this will allow users to control devices from the Google Home app on one device, while using the Apple Home app on iOS, among others.
But Turner also offered some details about Google’s future vision for the Home app made possible by Matter. She says a “proactive” home is a big part of this vision, explaining:
The proactive house is really that clever class, whether it can predict that I’ll go upstairs, it’s ten at night, and I always go to my bedroom at that time, so turn on the lights for me; Or, I’m watching TV, it’s 9:30 p.m., the kids are in bed, and I get a notification on my phone that the lights are on in the kid’s bedroom. Is anyone sick? Do they watch YouTube? The ability to do anomaly detection.
However, Turner says that vision won’t come true right away, explaining that Google will need time to learn from how users interact with Matter-enabled devices and build predictive algorithms with that data. She says it took Google “years” to get its “home” and “away” actions right, and that “proactive” vision seems more advanced.
Interestingly, it was mentioned that the current Nest Thermostat is committed to supporting Matter, but it seems that Google isn’t sure if the older Nest Learning Thermostat will be able to support the standard.
You can read Turner’s full comments on Matter at the edge.
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