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Amazon, fearing competition, won’t sell Nest products anymore
- Amazon’s retail team informed Google’s Nest team that new Nest products would not be sold on Amazon.com
- In retaliation, Nest is pulling all its products from Amazon as soon as current stock is depleted.
- This is another chess move in the ongoing war between the two smart home giants.
Late last year, a conference call between Nest, the Google-owned smart home company, and the retail team at Amazon resulted in some sobering news: Amazon would not be carrying any new entries in the Nest catalog. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was never called out by name, the Amazon retail team stated that the decision came “from the top.”
In response to this, Nest has decided to pull its entire catalog from Amazon. You will still be able to find Nest products on the world’s highest-ranked e-commerce platform for now, but the listings will disappear once existing product sells through.
It is not clear if third-party Amazon sellers will still be able to sell Nest products, or if Amazon will impose a site-wide ban in response to Nest. But, for now, it’s safe to assume that if you would like to buy a Nest product in the future, you won’t be able to buy it on Amazon.
It is also unclear what will happen to the other smart home companies with a huge Amazon presence. While Nest is easily Amazon’s biggest competition in the smart home industry, there are plenty of other smaller players that sell products on the site. Will they be removed as well?
This move is another illumination of the ongoing war between Google and Amazon when it comes to smart home and virtual assistant products. Amazon currently dominates the smart speaker game with its range of Echo products, but Google’s line of Home products is catching up fast. Now that Amazon is buying up smart home companies like Ring and Blink in an attempt to take over our connected homes, kicking Nest off the Amazon retail platform makes Google’s ability to compete much more difficult.
This is not the first time Amazon has snubbed Google from benefitting from a presence on the retail giant’s shelves. Google hardware like the Google Home and Pixel 2 smartphone, for example, are not sold on the site.
This is also not the first time Google has retaliated to Amazon’s snubs. The native YouTube app, for example, is not available on Amazon’s FireTV and Echo Show products. In a truce of sorts, Amazon has promised to put Google’s Chromecast for sale on the site, but it is not yet clear whether that will change Google’s mind, especially now with this Nest situation.
Smart home owners are already starting to show fierce loyalty to one of the two brands. Perhaps current Amazon smart home enthusiasts will change their minds about aligning themselves with a company that it is so anti-competitive.