Google Nest Ramps Up Budding IoE Rivalry for Smart Home Market

A burgeoning rivalry is taking shape between IT heavyweights Apple (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO) Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM) and, to a lesser degree, Microsoft (MSFT) to carve out the initial swaths of territory in the smart home market and the Internet of Everything.

No one yet appears to mind that the IoE’s amorphous nature doesn’t make for an easily framed blueprint for how to approach it, let alone establish a beachhead. The players do know, however, about the IoE’s outsized potential—some $19 trillion globally by Cisco’s estimate—of which the smart home segment is but a portion.

The home automation market’s hobgoblin right now is that there’s no killer app to drive it. But Google and Apple both are giving it a run using smart gadgets as a starting point—a move the search giant loudly made clear with its $3.2 billion Nest acquisition and subsequent $555 million purchase of Dropcam. Apple has parried with a smart home software play called HomeKit and word is the iPhone maker is mulling smart home hardware as well.

Google’s latest IoE home automation move is the new Nest Developer Program, opening the platform to developers and allowing partners to link their apps and software to Nest’s sensor-equipped hardware, such as its Nest Thermostat. The device will serve as a directing hub to other gadgets or appliances in the home. In effect, it now can talk to Whirlpool washers and dryers, LIFX light bulbs, Jawbone’s health wristband and Mercedes Benz automobiles with other communicating gadgets to come.

“Other companies make digital control panels and apps that let you turn things on and off around the house. But we want to go beyond simply linking and remote controlling the devices in your home,” wrote Matt Rogers, Nest founder and Engineering head, in a blog post.

“What we’re doing is making it possible for your Nest devices to securely interact with the things you already use every day,” he said. “Things like lights, appliances, fitness bands and even cars. Because when we make connections between these different parts of your life, we can create personalized experiences that do even more to keep you comfortable and safe. And help you save energy around the house. Automatically.”

At this point, Google’s grand plan to stake its IoE claim appears to be tethered to OS software rather than hardware, notwithstanding the Nest and Dropcam buys. If Nest can establish itself as a platform to direct appliances made by other manufacturers, its potential to land-grab the market is brighter than if it relies on building one whiz-bang gadget after another. The IT industry’s history is clear on the point that software trumps hardware at every corner and turn.

Google is claiming that already some 5,000 developers may want in on the Nest platform. The vendor said its Google Ventures arm has teamed with venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to kick off an investment fund called the Thoughtful Things Fund to back startups building on the platform.

Microsoft last week launched a smilar startup accelerator for IoE home automation. 

Considering this is just the beginning of the next big thing, it’s an interesting start.