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Last year, the Nest website began redirecting users to Google’s official store in order to buy new devices. Now, Nest.com will automatically take you to a Nest category landing page on the Google Store. Ever since its team became a part of Google again, they’ve had a roadmap for dissolving the standalone brand in favor of its new “Google Nest” identity.
Upon being redirected, you’ll now be met with a small banner at the top of the page that reads:
“Nest is now Google Nest. To find links you might need to manage your existing Nest products Click here.”
Luckily, visiting the My Nest Home website still takes you directly to manage your devices, but if you’re the type of person who wants to manage everything “in the same place” you can simply click your profile image at the top right of the Google Store and click ‘My Nest Home’.
All of this is nice and all, and it certainly shows that the two teams are working together to unify everything, but I’m still a bit irked that all of the original app’s functionality hasn’t been ported to the Google Home app. I’m sure I’m not the only one to point out that while rebranding efforts are vital, they shouldn’t exactly take priority over unifying the functionality for users.
The fact that I still have to open the old Nest app to set my Nest Guard is bothersome. I’d also like to be able to set it via the website. The day I can uninstall the original app and do absolutely everything in the new Google Home app instead, I’ll be satisfied. Let me know in the comments section if you’re in favor of the “Google Nest” branding and all of its changes, or if you prefer the original marketing and setup.
As I always say – change is good, but you have to be sure to take your users on that journey with you instead of leaving them behind. I’m hoping that this small website change hints at the development team ramping up work on these highly requested (more important) features and that they intend to roll them out before long.
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