Google Home gets a glow-up as Gemini joins the party with its uncanny observational skills

Google is describing the new raft of products and services launching under its Google Home division as the ‘next chapter’ in home intelligence. We’ve had a preview of the company’s uprated and upgraded hardware and back-end. Our first thoughts? If you go all in on Google’s new Home eco-system, there’ll be many compelling reasons – and reasonable caveats – that justify the hype.

First things first. The smart home didn’t really work, did it? Even Google admits as such. Ten years or so after the first devices appeared touting connectivity and controllability, the much mythologised ‘internet of things’ remains the domain of a small but dedicated coterie of home hackers and tech enthusiasts. For the rest of us, add or remove one element from this carefully constructed house of cards and you’re in danger of demolishing the whole edifice.

Enough of all that. The big news for late 2025 is the replacement of the Google Assistant with Google Gemini, part of the creeping AI-ification of every facet of our lives. Perhaps this one will be a little different. Many of us – this writer included – use Google Assistant more than we know. Like Alexa or Siri, Assistant sits within our phones and smart speakers and can usually be relied upon to deliver a weather forecast, perform a simple calculation, answer a question or stream a radio station.

And yet. Assistant often acts like a glorified gopher, with responses like ‘I found a website that might be useful’ when it can’t drag up the answer itself. Gemini will change all that, in ways that can scarcely be imagined. According to Google, this step change ‘turns the page on the last era’ and introduces a new age of ‘helpful, proactive’ home AI.

From the outset, Gemini for the home will manifest itself in a more familiar, conversational and natural way, with ten new natural language voice models complete with more realistic pacing and cadence. Anyone who’s used Gemini’s voice recognition capabilities will know that it is a very companion-like experience.

What will change the domestic manifestation is the system’s ability to define and utilise context. Not only will we be able to chat back and forth with our freshly Gemini-enabled devices, but the system will be able to infer all sorts of background information from other connected sources – your calendar or contacts, for example.

In addition, these smart(er) capabilities will also be baked into Google’s Nest series of security cameras, both indoor and outdoor, as well as the Nest doorbell, almost a ubiquitous piece of home tech in certain American suburbs. Even Walmart’s ultra-budget ‘onn’ range will be able to hook up to the system.

And what does the system entail? For Google, the overarching ambition is to streamline the use case and make everyone’s vast database of imagery and information more easily searchable. It’s a valid point. Those familiar with the Nest system will know that the currently ‘dumb’ system spews endlessly notifications, triggered by movements indoors and out, be they pets, children or passing cars.

With the ‘semantic scene understanding’ introduced by Gemini, notifications should become incredibly specific: ‘UPS driver left a package on the porch by the chair,’ or ‘a woman in an Amnesty International T-shirt range the doorbell and waited for two minutes.’

All of this data gets distilled into a ‘Home Brief’, a daily summary of what happened in your Nest-equipped home and environs. It’ll be a godsend for homeowner associations and neighbourhood watches, and a way of living a vicarious domestic life while you’re trapped in your cubicle at work. All this is controlled through an updated, streamlined and enhanced Google Home app.

Cameras have been given greater 2K resolution and a wider field of view, all the better to help the system decode what it’s looking at. The term ‘facial recognition’ wasn’t raised at the presentation, but it’s hard not to see how a swift cross-reference between your photos, contacts and calendar to see if anyone unfamiliar has been snooping around.

And of course, all of these watching and listening capabilities can be smooshed together in myriad ways through custom automations. This is where hobbyists have traditionally excelled and the rest of us lost heart after the massive achievement of programming the Christmas lights to switch on when it gets dark. Put simply, an automation is simple programming – if this happens, do that.

These days, ‘programming’ is a bit of a misnomer, as automations can be built by simply asking Gemini to put them together – just enter ‘At night, if no one is home, use lights and TV to make it look like someone’s home’ and hey presto, your eco-system of Google-enabled devices will club together to create a simulacra of a bustling hearth.

Other devices can also be accommodated into this web of connectivity, starting with Google’s own Nest thermostat and extending to a growing family of smart devices. Google’s own products are made with recycled plastic and err on the affordable side, all the more reason to get as many as possible. The former Nest Aware subscription service will be bundled into Google Home Premium, and the company is also striving to consolidate all the Nest app features into Google Home.

Why go premium? It’s all about the data. If you’re onboard with surrendering every bump and rustle of your home to the company’s servers, you’ll have a rich seam of searchable data to draw on. Standard ($10/month or $100/year) subs enable you to save 30 days of ‘event-based video history’, a capability that doubles with the Advanced sub ($20/month, $200/year). If you want summaries and the ability to search this history, you’ll need the Advanced package, which also delivers daily recaps of what’s been going on.

Finally, Google has baked all this capability into a new premium smart speaker, the Google Home Speaker. Available from spring 2026 in Porcelain, Hazel, Jade and Berry, the 360-degree speaker doubles up as a home theatre component, with a newly designed lower light ring that indicates when Gemini Live is active.

So what will this all mean? The law of unintended consequences plays fast and loose with technological innovation, and there are limitless scenarios opened up by having a searchable audio and video database of two months of domestic life. To European sensibilities, it’s all a little Black Mirror (particularly the Jesse Armstrong-penned episode ‘The Entire History of You’ from Season 1).

There’s also the suspicion that the smart home stuff is pitched at the modern American suburban experience, a tech-enabled personal empire of ennui where battles rage against porch pirates and scammers, furniture-shredding pets and thermostat-abusing WFH partners. It suggests whole neighbourhoods of Gemini-enabled ‘mockupants’, frantically and automatically running devices and switching lights on and off to simulate an active home life.

While this announcement was a good opportunity to launch next-generation camera and doorbell models, the biggest takeaway is that Gemini for the Home is coming to us all. That’s right – every single speaker, smart display, doorbell and camera ever made by Google will have these functions enabled in due course. An end to loneliness? Or the start of a deluge of data that threatens to drown us all?

Nest Cam Outdoor (wired, 2nd gen), available in Snow and Hazel, for $149.99

Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen), available in Snow, Hazel, and Berry, for $99.99

Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen), available in Snow, Hazel, and Linen, for $179.99

Google Home Speaker, available soon, Home.Google.com, Gemini.Google.com, Store.Google.com