Google's Nest And Amazon's Alexa Will Become Friends Soon

Nest might now be owned by Google, but that doesn't mean it's beyond making friends outside Mountain View. Amazon, considered a rival of Google in more ways than one, is one such new acquaintance. Nest has announced that, in a few weeks time, Nest Thermostat and Amazon's Alexa will become familiar with each other, allowing users to turn the heat up or down with their voice, in case they also happen to have an Amazon Echo or Fire TV sitting around the house.

Integration with Alexa isn't just a simple case of commanding the personal assistant to set the Nest Learning Thermostat to this or that temperature. Alexa has a special skill called, er, "Skill", where she/it can perform more complicated actions beyond a single command. Things like telling it to tell Nest that you're feeling too hot so that it could dial the temp down a bit.

Even better, if the user is already familiar with IFTTT, he or she can access even more functionality. At the moment, there are more than 54 recipes already prepared when the integration launches. These range from simply using Echo to set the Nest temperature to, amusingly, making that a ToDo for a later time.

The Nest-Alexa integration couldn't have come at a better time. Amazon just announced two new devices, the Tap and the Echo Dot, that both bear Alexa inside. This is in addition to the other third party devices that Amazon is integrating with Alexa, like the Triby fridge speaker and eveny Ford's SYNC platform. Although Nest only explicitly mentions the Echo speaker and the Fire TV, the feature could very well be made available to other Alexa-powered devices later on.

Nest hasn't yet revealed exactly when the feature will be made available and if users need to take special action to activate it.

SOURCE: Nest