Google now has its own smart home OS

Over the course of 2016, it became clear that Google is racing to catch up to Amazon in the smart home market. Google Home is essentially just an Amazon Echo using Google Assistant instead of Amazon's Alexa. Google's next play for the smart home market is its its own operating system for smart devices. The company announced Android Things for IoT devices. The OS will allow devices to connect to other Android devices using Weave, Google's own IoT communication standard.

Android Things is actually more of a rebranding effort than a completely new OS. The OS is mostly Brillo with a new coat. Rebranding can help breathe new life into a project, though, like what happened to Google Wallet.

With Android Things, Google wants to make it easier to develop products using its OS. Google is using the same developer tools as the standard version of Android on smartphones, so it should be familiar to any developers already working on Google's more popular platform.

Adoption is still the most important thing, though. Support for other platforms is also vital, as many competing platforms have left some consumers confused or frustrated when putting together smart homes. This is why so many China manufacturers of products like smart lights and sockets still opt to use wireless standards like ZigBee and Bluetooth, which are widely supported. This does not guarantee all products will work with any given proprietary smart home platform, but interoperability of standards is a big first step. Google has a good track record of supporting multiple standards, although in this case it clearly wants it Weave standard to catch on.