Amazon Ditches Nest Smart Home Products as Rivalry With Google Intensifies
The rivalry between Amazon and Google is still on its way to becoming the biggest competition in the smart home industry, and the claws are definitely out as Amazon has reportedly decided to drop all products of the Google-owned Nest from its online shopping platform.
Google acquired Nest back in 2014 for a total of $3.2 billion. It is a company focused on developing smart home hardware products including thermostats, security cameras, doorbells, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that can all be physically and remotely controlled through a compatible smartphone or tablet.
According to Business Insider, Amazon's retail team held a conference call with Nest before 2017 ended to inform the latter of its decision to no longer sell its products on Amazon.com, including its thermostats and home security cameras.
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It was reportedly made clear to Nest that it was not because its products were not selling. However, Amazon's team purportedly mentioned that the decision to snub Nest products had come from the higher-ups. Though the name of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was never mentioned in the call, Business Insider's source said it was practically implied that the decision had come from him.
As of this writing, people can still find the concerned company's products on Amazon.com since Amazon is just waiting to sell the rest of the Nest hardware in their warehouse before completely removing them from their product listings.
If one does a quick search of Nest on Amazon.com, people will find that the Nest Learning Thermostat is actually tagged a "Best Seller" and rated 4.5 out of 5 stars from more than 17,100 customer reviews. The retail site also lists this product as being in stock.
In 2017, Amazon and Google were going back and forth in an obvious attempt to draw a line of competition especially since both companies were evidently trying to dominate the smart home field with their own platforms, the Alexa and Google Assistant. In September of last year, support for the YouTube app on Amazon Echo Show was removed by Google, and the same thing happened to the Amazon Fire TV just as 2018 began.
