Since Nest joined Google’s hardware team last year, we’ve been working to make the smart home a little less complicated, and well, more helpful. It’s a home where products work together to help you feel comfortable and safe, keep an eye on things when you’re away, and connect you to friends and family. Today, we’re committing to that goal by bringing the Home products under the Nest brand. Our first step as Google Nest is to go beyond the idea of a ‘smart home’, and to focus instead on creating a ‘helpful home’.

Today, we want to share our privacy commitments, updates to Nest accounts and the Works with Nest (WWN) platform.

Our commitment to privacy in the home

To give you a better understanding of how our connected home devices and services will work in your home, we’ve outlined a set of privacy commitments that apply when these devices and services are used with Google Accounts:

• We’ll explain our sensors and how they work. The technical specifications for our connected home devices will list all audio, video, environmental and activity sensors – whether enabled or not. And you can find the types of data these sensors collect and how that data is used in various features in our dedicated help centre page.
• We’ll explain how your video footage, audio recordings and home environment sensor readings are used to offer helpful features and services, and our commitment for how we’ll keep this data separate from advertising and ad personalisation.
• We’ll explain how you can control and manage your data, such as providing you with the ability to access, review, and delete audio and video stored with your Google Account at any time.

Our goal is simple: Earn and keep your trust by clearly explaining how our products work and how we’ll uphold our commitment to respect your privacy. To learn more, please check out our commitment to privacy in the home.

One secure account

Another step we’re taking to help keep your Nest devices secure is making Google Accounts available to anyone using existing Nest devices and services. Google has a long history of providing billions of people with industry-leading automatic security protections when accessing products like Gmail, Photos, Maps and Drive with their Google Account.

Beginning this year, you’ll have the option to migrate your Nest Account to a Google Account, which comes with the added benefits of tools and automatic security protections:

• Suspicious activity detection sends you notifications whenever we detect unusual or potentially dangerous activity, such as suspicious sign-ins to your account.
• Security Check-Up provides personalised guidance to help you secure your account and manage your online security.
• 2-Step Verification strengthens your account security by adding an advanced second verification step whenever you sign in, including additional features like a prompt from a trusted device or the use of a physical security key.

If you already have a Google Account for Gmail and other Google products, you can migrate your Nest Account to that account. New Nest users will automatically start with a Google Account at the same time that existing users are invited to migrate to Google Accounts. You’ll be able to use your Google Account across both the Nest app and the Google Home app, and with all of Google’s other products.

One home developer platform

And finally, we’re unifying our efforts around third-party connected home devices under a single platform. Our goal is to simplify the experience for developers and to give you more control over how your data is shared. To accomplish this, we’re delivering a single consumer and developer experience through the Works with Google Assistant platform (WWGA) programme.

We’re committed to supporting the integrations that you value and minimising disruptions during this transition. Your existing devices and WWN integrations will continue working with your Nest Account, however you won’t have access to new features that will be available with a Google Account. And we’ll stop accepting new WWN connections on 31 August 2019. Once your WWN functionality is available on the WWGA platform, you can migrate with minimal disruption from a Nest Account to a Google Account. We know that we can't build a one-size-fits-all solution, so we're moving quickly to work with our most popular developers to create and support helpful interactions that give you the best of Google Nest.

For more details about all the changes, check out the What’s Happening with Google Nest FAQ, where you can learn more.

As technology becomes a bigger part of our lives – especially when we're at home – privacy and security are more important than ever. We recognise that we’re a guest in your home, and we respect and appreciate that invitation – and these updates are among the many ways we hope to continue to earn your trust.