My parents once had a goofball, all-white Siberian Husky mix who liked to tease their other dog, a Black Lab mix with a cranky but lovable temperament. Husky would take a toy or delicious, giant dog bone in his mouth and then walk it over to Lab, juuust close enough to get it within grabbing distance of Lab’s mouth. Then when Lab would lunge for it, Husky would pull it away, tail wagging with glee.
Google is doing a bit of that. Perhaps it felt compelled to yank the wraps off its long-rumored Google Nests that’ll feature Gemini Home, Google’s Gemini Ai-infused replacement for the worsening, regularly annoying Google Assistant.
Gemini Home is what I hope to be the savior of the Google Home smart home platform. Too bad that you won’t be able to buy these Nests until sometime in the spring of 2026.
hurry up and wait
Perhaps Google felt pressured to announce the new Nests because Amazon unveiled on September 30 a range of new Echo devices, which compete directly with Google Nest. The Echos’ launch dates range from October 29 to November 12, which beats out Google’s next-generation Nests by quite a while. I wouldn’t blame Google for getting a bit anxious.
Amazon’s devices do feature Alexa+, which Amazon touts as an advanced AI, but I wouldn’t place it on the same pedestal as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google’s own Gemini. Google’s announcement may have just been a shot across Amazon’s bow to remind them of which one has the AI that carries the big stick and which one is, despite their device’s more imminent release dates, playing the real game of catch-up.
When it does finally launch in the spring of 2026—the most concrete release date we have—the new version of the Google Home Speaker will go on sale for $100.
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