Leak reveals the name of Google’s new smart speaker
By ForGeeks
Google may drop the Nest brand in future smart speakers. One of the unexpected highlights of August’s Made by Google event was the brief appearance of an unannounced speaker. The company hasn’t officially talked about it until now, but a fresh leak has revealed its supposed name and one of its features.
Google Home Speaker instead of Nest
According to an APK parsing of version 3.41 of the Google Home app for Android by 9to5Google, the new device may be called Google Home Speaker. The code also found hints of support for 360-degree sound. This confirms speculation, as the speaker shown in August had a spherical design reminiscent of Apple’s HomePod Mini.
Rebranding Nest Aware
The leak points not only to a name change for the speaker itself, but also to global changes to the company’s services. The subscription Nest Aware may be renamed to Google Home Premium, and the enhanced version Nest Aware Plus — to Google Home Premium Advanced. The latter name has already been called unfortunate by experts, but these are the lines that were found in the code. All of this raises the possibility that «Google Home Speaker» will indeed become the official name of the device, rather than a temporary designation.
The Google Home Speaker» will indeed become the official name of the device, rather than a temporary designation.
Why Google is returning to the Home brand
The choice to name the Google Home Speaker may seem overly simple and even corny, but the decision is logical in terms of brand recognition. Despite the popularity of Nest smart cameras, theGoogle brand is much stronger and closer to a wider audience, especially among users who don’t follow technology in depth.
However, the Google Home Speaker brand is not the only one that has a strong brand identity.
The main factor for buyers will still be sound quality and feature set. Coupled with Google’s name, that could give the device far more attention and commercial success than continuing to use the Nest brand.
So the upcoming Google Home Speaker could be the start of a new lineup of Google-branded smart speakers, signaling a definitive move away from the Nest brand.
