Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

The new feature in Google Home lets you add your pets’ faces to your indoor cameras, so you get alerts that tell you which cat is walking on the counter rather than just that a cat is traversing the kitchen. To enable it, type your pet’s name and species into the Ask Home search box in the Home app; you need Google Home Premium Advanced ($20/month).

The smart lighting company best known for its modular RGB lighting panels has been acquired by OneRobotics, the parent company of Switchbot. According to a filing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the purchase will take two years to complete.

It’s combining Google Home APIs with Gemini smart home features, so ISPs, security companies, and carriers can “build monetizable, proactive services” for your homes. In other words, Google wants other companies to put Google Home’s AI in their products — and charge you a Google Home Premium subscription. With manufacturers now able to build Gemini-powered speakers and cameras, it seems entirely possible that Google may never make another Nest device again.

While the Google Home Speaker was nowhere to be seen at I/O, the company did announce it’s getting back into the third-party smart speaker game. A new Speaker Reference Design will let manufacturers build Gemini-powered smart speakers, and rumors point to a Walmart Onn speaker being the first.

Come join me for a robot vacuum-themed subscriber AMA. Drop your questions in the post linked below, and I’ll be answering them starting at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.

Its new DIY security system, ADT Blu, revives the Blue by ADT name (the company’s last attempt at an off-the-shelf system) and uses the same hardware as ADT Plus (its self- or pro-installed system). But it’s DIY-only and can be bought on Amazon. The other difference? No Google Nest cameras. The system comes with new ADT cameras. Pricing for ADT Blue starts at $249.