Last month, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) held a launch event for Matter, celebrating the alliance of companies over a single standard for smart home products. While it's still very early days for Matter, companies have rallied together, and at the time of the announcement, 190 products were certified or are in the process of certification. Google has also shown support and, today, announced that going forward, Matter will be available on Nest and Android devices.
Google clarified how its products would connect with other Matter-enabled devices. The company also announced that Android and Nest devices would automatically be updated to be compatible, meaning users wouldn't have to worry, and things would just work. For Android, the device needs to be running Android 8.1 or later, while Nest devices will need the latest update.
The company states that a hub will be necessary to control Matter devices but that pretty much all of its devices can act as one, like the Google Home and Home Mini, the Nest Mini, and the Nest Audio. Furthermore, Google's Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, and the Nest Wifi Pro can be used as Thread border routers as well. Matter devices can use different technologies to connect, with Google's devices supporting Wi-Fi and Thread.
For its Android devices, Google has updated its Fast Pair feature to support Matter, making it easy to connect devices on a network with a variety of different smart home apps. So going forward, you'll have access to a wide array of different smart home products that can all play nice with each other. Google states that it has worked alongside 300 companies to make this a reality. In addition, Google is working to bring iOS support to the Home app in 2023.
While Matter devices aren't that common at this point, there should be a lot of devices coming to market in the next year. Google states that you should look out for a Matter badge on products or its own "Works With Google Home" logo.
Source: Google