Choosing your ecosystem, part 3 of 8. New to the series? Start with part 1.
The short version: Google Home has the smartest assistant and the best Android integration of the three landlords. It keeps more about you than Apple does, and it has a habit of discontinuing hardware. It works with Home Assistant, but it needs more paperwork than Apple.
We left the strata apartment last time and walked down the street to the share house. The landlord here is brilliant. Ask for something in plain English and it gets done. The fridge restocks itself. But the landlord keeps a detailed diary of who’s home and when, and every couple of years knocks out a wall you were quite attached to.
Google’s hubs are its Nest speakers and displays, the new Google Home Speaker that arrived in Australia in June at AU$199, and the Google TV Streamer. Several of these are also Thread border routers, including the Nest Hub (second generation), the Nest Hub Max, the Google TV Streamer and the Nest Wifi Pro router. The Google TV Streamer and the Home Speaker are the ones Google now positions as the centre of the house.
The voice itself is changing. Gemini for Home started replacing Google Assistant on Australian speakers and displays in early access from April 2026, with Google saying it will reach all existing devices over time. It’s much better at following a conversation and handling vague requests like "make it cosy in here". Some of the headline features, including Gemini Live conversations, searching your camera history by description and creating automations by voice, need a Google Home Premium subscription. That replaced Nest Aware, and the Standard tier is AU$15 a month or AU$150 a year. A more expensive Advanced tier adds 24/7 camera recording and longer history.
Google’s model is to sync your home to your Google account. Every device, its state, your routines and your activity history live there, and that’s what makes the experience so good across phones, speakers and the web. Google says it doesn’t keep audio recordings of your voice requests unless you opt in, but the text of your requests and your device activity are kept in your account’s activity history until you delete them or turn on auto-delete. Nest cameras record to Google’s cloud.
Even Matter devices, which Google controls locally over your own network, get their status synced back to the account so the app works away from home. Local control means faster, more reliable switching. It doesn’t mean Google stops keeping the diary.
The share house’s real weakness is the landlord’s enthusiasm for renovating. In 2025 Google stopped making the Nest Protect smoke alarm and the Nest x Yale smart lock, and ended support for the first two generations of the Nest Learning Thermostat. Ducted heating and cooling in Australia usually runs on its own controller, so the thermostat news hit fewer homes here than in the US. The pattern is the bigger point. Google doesn’t always run with the furniture it sells.
The practical lesson is to buy Matter-certified devices from established brands rather than Google’s own niche hardware wherever you can. If Google moves on, a Matter plug keeps working with whoever runs the house next.
Google and Home Assistant can live together, but unlike Apple there’s no simple local bridge. There are five main ways the two connect.
Letting Google control Home Assistant. To make your Home Assistant devices show up in the Google Home app and respond to "Hey Google", the easy path is Home Assistant Cloud, the subscription run by Nabu Casa (the company that funds Home Assistant’s development). It’s US$6.50 a month and also covers secure remote access and offsite backups. It’s being renamed Home Assistant Link in December. You choose exactly which devices Google gets to see, so the robot vacuum can be on the list and the front door lock can stay off it. The free alternative is a manual setup involving a Google Cloud project and a publicly reachable web address for your Home Assistant. It works, but it’s an evening’s project for the technically confident and needs to be kept up to date.
Bringing Nest devices into Home Assistant. Nest thermostats, cameras and doorbells connect through Google’s Device Access program. Google charges a one-off US$5 fee, and you set up a small Google Cloud project to authorise it. Once it’s done, Home Assistant sees temperatures, camera events and doorbell presses. It’s still Google’s cloud underneath, so if Google changes the rules, this connection follows. The Nest Protect smoke alarm isn’t supported at all, and Google Workspace accounts can’t be used.
Sharing Matter devices. Any Matter device in Google Home can be shared with Home Assistant through the Google Home app’s linked Matter apps and services. On Android, Home Assistant’s companion app uses Google’s own Matter tools to commission devices, which makes adding new Matter gear from an Android phone very smooth.
Joining the Thread mesh. The Home Assistant companion app on Android can send your phone’s Google Thread credentials to Home Assistant, so a Home Assistant Thread radio can join Google’s mesh. This needs an Android phone on the same Wi-Fi network as the Google border router, which matters when we come to VLANs.
Using Google speakers as Home Assistant’s voice. Home Assistant’s Google Cast integration talks to Nest speakers, displays and Chromecasts locally. Home Assistant can make announcements, play alerts and show camera feeds on a Nest Hub without going near Google’s cloud.
Google’s devices like to find each other and your phone on the same network. The Google Home app, Cast and Thread credential sharing all lean on local discovery, the same mDNS announcements we covered in the Apple post.
Our default mirrors Apple’s. Nest speakers, displays and the Google TV Streamer go on VLAN 50 with the IoT devices they control. Phones on VLAN 10 can still cast to them as long as the router reflects mDNS between the two VLANs and Trust is allowed to start the connection. For adding new devices, or sharing Thread credentials from an Android phone, join the phone to Home-IoT for a few minutes and then move it back.
Two Google-specific things to watch for. Many Google devices are hard-coded to use Google’s own DNS servers (8.8.8.8) whatever your router tells them, which means Google sees every web address they look up. A well-configured gateway can quietly redirect those requests to the resolver you choose. And if you already own a Nest Wifi Pro, it’s also a Thread border router, so replacing it with a proper gateway and access points (which we’d usually recommend) means your Thread devices may need a new border router too.
Google Home is the right landlord for Android households who want the most capable assistant and are comfortable with their home living in their Google account. It’s a reasonable choice for mixed iPhone and Android families too, since the Google Home app works on both.
Choose your devices with the landlord’s renovation habits in mind. Matter-certified gear from brands that have been making it for years will outlast whatever Google is selling this season. Put Home Assistant underneath so the routines that matter don’t depend on Google’s next product meeting.
Next we head to the flat above the shop: Amazon Alexa, the new Alexa+, Ring, and why the cheapest landlord on the street might cost you more than you think.