More and more apps are being created to help you protect your home, start your car, check your baby’s vitals, and more. But how far are we willing to go? We use our smartphones for almost everything already. It seems google really wants to own and control all these smartphone apps and, in turn, basically be the sole provider of products controlling your everyday. For example, Google just bought another company called Nest that helps change your home into a smarthome.

What is Nest?

Nest is a small startup company that uses algorithms and sensors to determine how to keep your home at a comfortable temperature without wasting money. It tracks your behavior patterns in your home and heats it based on that. For example, the system knows when you come home from work every day and will heat up the house a half hour before you get there to make sure it is warm. You can still control the thermostat on your own, but it is also smart enough to tell when it is too hot, too cold, or just needs to be adjusted for the person in the room.

The only other thing Nest sells at the moment are smart smoke detectors/carbon monoxide detectors. They are smart enough to be able to tell the difference between a fire and a little bacon grease, and they can pinpoint exactly which smoke detector is going off in your home. You will know exactly which room is in danger, and you can hush it with a wave of your hand. On top of that, the detector won’t beep in the middle of the night to tell you the battery is dead. Instead, it will send you an email notification to let you know it is going to die soon. All of these products are quickly accessed and controlled by your smartphone apps.

Google purchased Nest

News just broke that Google purchased Nest. And though technology companies buying other ones is a pretty normal thing, many wonder what the reason is for this purchase. Maybe it was just to buy a promising start-up venture or maybe it was to get control over a new kind of idea of controlling your home through smartphone apps. According to USA Today, the merger was intended to help Nest grow faster and get more customers, but Google likely has more in mind than just making a good financial investment.

Integrating smartphones into everything

As a huge tech company, Google knows what it is doing by getting controlling interests in companies that focus specifically on home control through smartphone apps. Obviously Google wants to monopolize on the idea of smartphones helping us to monitor our homes and daily habits. Nest can get Google there if smart technology is incorporated into more of our daily lives. The question isn’t whether or not the technology is here or whether or not it will be available in just a few years. The real questions for Google is whether or not it is going to monopolize the market for smart home technology and how smartphones will be used to create a smart home.

Source: USA Today