Apple, Amazon, Google team up to make smart homes suck less

There’s a staggering number of smart home gadgets on the market right now, but compatibility with your desired ecosystem is far from a given. The variety of smart home standards means that you very well could buy a smart thermostat or smart kettle that doesn’t work with your favorite platform.

Now, Google has announced that it’s joined Amazon, Apple, and other brands to form the Connected Home over IP working group (managed by the Zigbee Alliance). The search giant says it’s contributing two “market-tested” open-source smart home technologies to the group in Weave and Thread.

“Our goal is to bring together market-tested technologies to develop a new, open smart home connectivity standard based on Internet Protocol (IP),” Google wrote on its blog, adding that IP enables secure communications between devices, apps, and cloud services.

Less work, more compatibility

The search giant says smart home gadget makers will benefit from this smart home alliance as they no longer need to spend time and resources building support for each major smart home platform.

“For developers, it simplifies product development and reduces costs by giving them one standard for building their products. You will then have the power to choose how you want to control your homes, independent of which smart home technology you choose,” Google explains.

“Smart home devices will be compatible with various platforms, so you can choose between Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri or other platforms.”

Speaking of other platforms, Zigbee Alliance board members such as Samsung SmartThings are also taking part in the smart home alliance. So those all-in on Samsung’s ecosystem are also set to enjoy the benefits.

When can we expect to see the first fruits of this smart home alliance? Well, the Connected Home over IP group notes that it plans to release draft specifications and a reference implementation by late 2020.