--- title: "Ecosystems Part 1: Apple, Google or Amazon? (Choosing Your Landlord)" description: Apple, Google and Amazon each run your smart home differently. Compare privacy, devices, subscriptions and lock-in before you pick a platform. image: https://homenetworks.com.au/hubfs/Ecosystems_Part1_rev2.png --- [Skip to content](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog/apple-google-or-amazon-choosing-a-smart-home-ecosystem#main-content) ![SMH&I](https://homenetworks.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Logo%20Transparency%20-01-300px.png?width=300&height=127&name=Logo%20Transparency%20-01-300px.png)Homepage - Home - Products & Solutions - Networking - [Aruba Instant On](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/hpe-aruba) - [TP-Link Omada](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/tplink-omada) - [HPE Juniper Networks](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/hpe-juniper) - Smart Home Controllers - Home Assistant (HAOS) - openHAB - [NUC Build Configurator](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-hubs) - Cameras & Security - IoT Devices - Guides - [What is a smart home](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/what-is-a-smart-home) - [The building blocks](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-building-blocks) - [Connectivity](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-protocols) - [Controllers](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-ecosystems) - [Networks](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-network) - [Blog](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog) - [Support](https://homenetworks.com.au/contact-us) - About Us [Shop](https://shop.homenetworks.com.au) - Home - Products & Solutions - Networking - [Aruba Instant On](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/hpe-aruba) - [TP-Link Omada](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/tplink-omada) - [HPE Juniper Networks](https://homenetworks.com.au/network/hpe-juniper) - Smart Home Controllers - Home Assistant (HAOS) - openHAB - [NUC Build Configurator](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-hubs) - Cameras & Security - IoT Devices - Guides - [What is a smart home](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/what-is-a-smart-home) - [The building blocks](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-building-blocks) - [Connectivity](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-protocols) - [Controllers](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-ecosystems) - [Networks](https://homenetworks.com.au/guides/smart-home-network) - [Blog](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog) - [Support](https://homenetworks.com.au/contact-us) - About Us [Shop](https://shop.homenetworks.com.au) ![](https://homenetworks.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Ecosystems_Part1_rev2.png?width=1536&height=1024&name=Ecosystems_Part1_rev2.png) Smart home ecosystems Home Assistant # Ecosystems Part 1: Apple, Google or Amazon? (Choosing Your Landlord) ![Dave Gilmore](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/0e8ebed7dfc5b869e670685272c7a0d2) Dave Gilmore October 31, 2026 *Choosing your ecosystem, part 1 of 8.* **The short version:** the first smart speaker you buy quietly picks a landlord for your whole house. Apple, Google and Amazon all want the job, they each run the building differently, and changing landlords later is a lot more work than choosing well up front. Most people don’t choose a smart home ecosystem. They end up in one. Someone gets an Echo Dot in a Christmas stocking, or the Nest Hub came free with a phone plan, or the family is all on iPhones and the Home app was just sitting there. Two years later there are thirty devices in the house, half of them only talk to one app, and the question of "which ecosystem" has already been answered by accident. So let’s answer it on purpose. ## Signing the lease The easiest way to think about Apple Home, Google Home and Amazon Alexa is as three different landlords. You live in the house, you bought the furniture (the bulbs, plugs, locks and cameras), but the landlord owns the building rules. They decide which furniture is allowed in, who holds the keys, what gets recorded in the visitor book, and whether the lifts still work next year. Every landlord also keeps a building manager on site. That’s the hub: a HomePod or Apple TV for Apple, a Nest speaker or display for Google, an Echo for Amazon. The hub is what actually turns the lights on when you ask, and it’s the device that reports back to head office. None of these landlords are villains. They’re just running different businesses, and the way each one makes money explains almost everything about how they run your house. ## The strata-managed apartment: Apple Home Apple runs the building like a well-kept apartment block with a strict body corporate. The common areas are spotless, the rules are enforced, and not just any furniture gets through the front door. Apple makes its money selling you the iPhone, the iPad and the Apple TV, so it has very little reason to want your data, and it has built Apple Home around that. HomeKit device data is end-to-end encrypted. Camera footage recorded through HomeKit Secure Video is analysed on your own Apple TV or HomePod and stored encrypted in iCloud, where Apple can’t watch it. A lot of Siri processing now happens on the device rather than in the cloud. Of the three landlords, Apple is the one that collects the least about how you live. The catch is the body corporate. Apple Home is at its best when everyone in the house is on an iPhone. Android users in the family are second-class tenants at best. Device choice has historically been narrower than Google’s or Amazon’s, and Siri spent years being the least capable of the three assistants. That’s changing fast. On 13 October 2026 Apple announced HomeView, its first dedicated home hub with a seven-inch screen, alongside a new HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K, and a range of Apple-badged cameras, locks and thermostats built with LG and Schneider Electric. HomeView is due in Australia from 13 November. Apple is clearly done treating the home as a side project. ## The share house with a very helpful landlord: Google Home Google runs the building like a share house where the landlord is brilliant at fixing things and very interested in what you get up to. Google’s business is understanding people well enough to be useful (and to sell advertising), so Google Home is built to sync everything to your Google account: device states, routines, activity history and, for Nest cameras, footage in the cloud. The upside is genuine. Google’s assistant has long been the best at understanding natural speech, Android integration is seamless, and Gemini for Home has been rolling out in Australia since April 2026, replacing Google Assistant on speakers and displays. The new Google Home Speaker landed here in June at AU$199. The more advanced features (Gemini Live conversations, searching your camera history, voice-created automations) sit behind a Google Home Premium subscription, which replaced Nest Aware and starts at AU$15 a month. The downside is that Google has a long habit of renovating the building while you’re still living in it. In 2025 alone Google stopped making the Nest Protect smoke alarm and the Nest x Yale lock, and ended support for the first two generations of the Nest Learning Thermostat. If you’ve been in the Google house for a while, you’ve probably had at least one device go quiet on you. ## The flat above the shop: Amazon Alexa Amazon runs the building like a cheap, well-located flat above its own department store. Rent is low, the Echo hardware is often heavily discounted, and the landlord would very much like you to pop downstairs and buy something. Alexa has the widest device compatibility of the three, and newer Echo speakers double as Zigbee, Thread and Matter hubs, which makes Amazon the cheapest way to get a whole house talking. Alexa+, Amazon’s generative AI upgrade, arrived in Australia in August 2026. It’s included with Prime or AU$29.99 a month without it. The privacy picture is the weakest of the three. Every Alexa voice request goes to Amazon’s cloud. Amazon removed the option for some Echo devices to process requests locally in March 2025, and Alexa+ makes cloud processing the whole point. Ring, Amazon’s camera and doorbell brand, is cloud-only and has a complicated history: in the US it added facial recognition for doorbells in late 2025 and now faces lawsuits over it. If you’re in the Amazon house, assume the landlord knows when you come and go. ## The landlords side by side | | Apple Home | Google Home | Amazon Alexa | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | How the landlord makes money | Selling you hardware | Knowing you well (ads, subscriptions) | Selling you things | | Main hub devices | HomePod, HomePod mini, Apple TV, HomeView | Nest speakers and displays, Google Home Speaker, Google TV Streamer | Echo speakers and Echo Show displays | | Where your data lives | Mostly on your devices, end-to-end encrypted in iCloud | Your Google account | Your Amazon account | | Voice processing | Much of it on device | Cloud | Cloud, every request | | Phone it suits best | iPhone only | Android first, iPhone works | Either | | Paid tier (Australia) | iCloud+ for HomeKit Secure Video | Google Home Premium from AU$15/month | Alexa+ free with Prime, otherwise AU$29.99/month | | Biggest risk | Narrower device choice, iPhone lock-in | Products discontinued under you | Privacy, cloud-dependent everything | ## Matter was supposed to make this not matter You’ll hear that Matter, the shared smart home standard all three landlords signed up to, means it no longer matters which ecosystem you choose. That’s half true. Matter means a compatible bulb or plug can be added to Apple, Google and Amazon at the same time, and it talks to them over your local network rather than through some manufacturer’s cloud. That’s a big deal, and it’s why we recommend Matter devices wherever there’s a choice. What Matter doesn’t standardise is everything above the device: your automations, your scenes, your camera history, your voice assistant, your subscriptions. Those still live with the landlord. Matter means you can take the furniture with you when you move. It doesn’t mean the new landlord honours your old lease. ## Where the landlord sits on your network If you’ve read [The Seating Chart](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog/part-6-the-seating-chart-which-devices-belong-on-which-network), you’ll remember we split the house into VLANs: Trust (VLAN 10) for phones and laptops, IoT (VLAN 50) for bulbs and plugs, and Servers (VLAN 20) for the smart home hub. The landlord’s building manager doesn’t fit neatly into any one room. A HomePod, Nest speaker or Echo is an always-on microphone talking to the cloud, which argues for treating it like IoT. It’s also usually a Thread border router and Matter controller, which means it needs to sit on the same network segment as the devices it controls. Our default is to put the landlords’ hubs on VLAN 50 alongside the devices they manage, and to keep them off VLAN 10 where they could see every phone and laptop in the house. We’ll go through the exceptions landlord by landlord in the next three posts. ## Or you could own the place There’s a fourth option that doesn’t involve renting at all. Home Assistant is free, open-source software that runs on a small box in your own house (one of our [smart home hubs](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-hubs), for example) and talks to almost every device from every brand, locally, without a landlord’s cloud in the middle. You can still keep Siri, Google or Alexa as the voice at the front door, but the keys, the rules and the visitor book all stay with you. Owning is more work than renting. Somebody has to fix the plumbing. But it’s the only option where the building can’t be renovated out from under you, and it’s the one we build most of our installs around. Each of the next three posts covers how one landlord works with Home Assistant, and post five covers what owning looks like in practice. ## Coming up Next we move into the strata-managed apartment: what living in Apple Home actually looks like day to day, how it plays with Home Assistant, and where Apple’s devices belong on your network.  ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhomenetworks.com.au%2Fsmart-home-networks-and-iot-blog%2Fapple-google-or-amazon-choosing-a-smart-home-ecosystem](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhomenetworks.com.au%2Fsmart-home-networks-and-iot-blog%2Fapple-google-or-amazon-choosing-a-smart-home-ecosystem) ## Keep reading ### [![](https://homenetworks.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Ecosystem_Part6_rev2.png?width=1536&height=1024&name=Ecosystem_Part6_rev2.png) Smart home ecosystems Home Assistant Ecosystems Part 6: Leaving Google Home (Without Losing a Thing)](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog/how-to-leave-google-home-for-home-assistant) ### [![](https://homenetworks.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Ecosystem_Part7_rev1.png?width=1642&height=958&name=Ecosystem_Part7_rev1.png) Smart home ecosystems Home Assistant Ecosystems Part 7: Leaving Alexa and Ring (and the Zigbee Chore)](https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog/how-to-leave-alexa-and-ring-for-home-assistant) [![SMH&I](https://homenetworks.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Logo%20Transparency%20-01-300px.png?width=300&height=127&name=Logo%20Transparency%20-01-300px.png "SMH&I")](https://homenetworks.com.au/) We build networks for Aussie homes who've outgrown their ISP router or basic mesh WiFi. From prosumer WiFi and smart home automation (HAOS, openHAB) to mini PC home servers, we design systems that just work.  Smart Home Networks and IoT Baulkham Hills, NSW, 2153 0417-427-106 sales@homenetworks.com.au --- Privacy Policy · Legal · © 2026. All rights reserved. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Dave Gilmore", "url" : "https://homenetworks.com.au/smart-home-networks-and-iot-blog/author/dave-gilmore" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-31T04:32:44.947Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-31T00:37:12.000Z", "headline" : "Ecosystems Part 1: Apple, Google or Amazon? 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