Google cuts the Nest Hub of the favorite feature of children … and their parents

A change to the Nest Hub announced last year will soon impact the lives of families who appreciate the connected speaker with a screen powered by Google Assistant.

The Nest Hub is the flagship of Google’s line of home automation products. Their owners take advantage of this device to control electronic equipment in the home. Google’s ‘everyday companion’ is also great for keeping the kids busy while you go about your household chores, for example. The combination of touch screen and voice control is indeed ideal for providing stimulating interactive games for toddlers..

To launch these educational games, simply give the order to the Nest Hub of a “Hey Google, let’s play a game”. The toy library on offer is quite extensive and ranges from “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock” (a variant of “Shi Fu Mi”) to “Heads or Tails”, through the classic Blind Test and other Quiz. Number of titles specially designed for children are also offered by third-party developers. If you’re a Nest Hub owner and you particularly enjoy these apps, know thatthey will soon disappear.

Google’s Nest Hub will soon no longer show a Games tab

This comes as no surprise to third-party developers. As early as last summer, Google had officially announced to them focus on App Actions for Android and make it the best way to create more impactful vocal experiences.” As a result, Conversation Actions, the API proposed so far for creating voice apps on the Nest Hub, will simply disappear.

The disappearance of the entire catalog of games, but also of educational experiences and stories may upset children… and their parents who had found in this functionality a valuable ally when it comes to occupying their offspring. However, there is no doubt that the company and the developers will soon be offering similar applications, but with different interfaces and programming techniques, based on artificial intelligence in particular. It is in any case on this technology that the company now wants to concentrate its efforts, as evidenced by the release of Bard, the rival of Chat GPT.

Source: 9TB 5 Google