Google Is Letting Other Companies Use Its Smart Home AI—and Charge You for It
Google Is Letting Other Companies Use Its Smart Home AI—and Charge You for It
Google is opening up its Gemini smart home technology to companies like ADT and AT&T. These companies can now build Gemini into their own apps and services, rather than Google selling it only through its own Nest hardware. This is a big shift: instead of making money from selling smart speakers and cameras, Google is trying to make money by letting other companies pay to use the technology.
The way it works is fairly straightforward. Third-party companies can now bundle Google's smart home features into their own subscription packages. Google offers two pricing tiers: a Standard Plan for $10 a month (or $100 a year), and an Advanced Plan at $20 a month (or $200 a year). If you already pay for Google's AI Pro or AI Ultra subscriptions, you get some of these features included or at a discount.
What Gemini for Home Does
Gemini is Google's newest smart home assistant, replacing the older Google Assistant. It will run on every Google smart speaker, display, camera, and doorbell made over the past ten years.
The Standard Plan gives you hands-free conversations with Gemini, help setting up automation in your home, the ability to watch 30 days of video recordings from your cameras, and smarter alerts. The Advanced Plan adds more AI features, daily summaries of what happened in your home, and the ability to search through all your video history.
Why Google Is Doing This
Smart home companies have struggled to make money. Amazon lost over $25 billion on its Alexa devices between 2017 and 2021. Google has invested heavily in its Nest smart home brand but has also had a hard time turning that into profit.
The original plan was simple: sell cheap hardware to get devices into people's homes, then make money when those people buy things or use premium services. But that hasn't worked as well as expected. Most people just use their smart speakers to set timers, check the weather, or play music—things that don't make companies much money.
The broader context here is that after years of betting on smart home hardware as a profit engine, Google is now acknowledging a hard truth: the real money comes from selling services to many customers through many different companies, not from selling devices directly. By licensing Gemini to companies like ADT (which handles home security) or AT&T (which provides internet and phone service), Google can reach customers it might never have sold to otherwise. ADT customers don't need to buy Google hardware; they just get Gemini built into the security service they already pay for.
How Partners Will Use This
Security companies like ADT can add AI-powered alerts and monitoring to their existing apps. Telecom companies like AT&T can offer smart home features as an extra benefit with your internet bill. Partners don't have to build this technology themselves—Google handles it, and they handle the customer relationship.
The technical design lets partners pick which features they want to offer, rather than having to take everything or nothing. This makes it simpler for companies to integrate Google's AI into what they already do.
What This Means Going Forward
This strategy matters because it shows how tech companies are learning to make money from AI in the home. Instead of betting everything on hardware sales, Google is spreading Gemini across many different services and providers. Other companies like Amazon and Apple will likely face pressure to do something similar.
In my author's view, we've seen this pattern before—going back decades, when Microsoft licensed Windows to computer makers instead of building all the computers itself. Companies that make this shift from selling their own hardware to licensing their technology typically make more money and reach more customers, though they lose some direct control. That trade-off has usually worked out well over time. Google's smart home strategy follows the same playbook, though like any new approach, success isn't guaranteed—it depends on whether companies actually want to use Gemini and whether customers will keep paying for it.
