Gemini for Home Previewed with New Nest Speaker

Google previews Gemini for Home and a first party speaker at Made by Google 2025.

Google unveils Gemini for Home and a new smart speaker

At Made by Google 2025 Google detailed Gemini for Home and briefly showed a new first party smart speaker. The company says Gemini for Home is more powerful and easier to use thanks to advanced reasoning, inference and search capabilities from its top models. The hotword Hey Google stays the same, but the system is designed to handle more nuanced requests instead of rigid commands. A single command can combine several tasks, for example dim the lights and set the temperature to 72 degrees. Gemini can also reason through complex commands like turning off lights everywhere except one room.

There is improved natural language support for calendar creation, shopping lists and timers. Users can tell Gemini to add ingredients to a shopping list or set a timer for a cooking task. Gemini also supports conversational search for practical questions such as how to keep raccoons out of a yard or what is the best time of year to visit a destination given weather and prices. Gemini Live enables natural back and forth discussion without repeating the hotword, with examples including meal planning and troubleshooting common household problems. The new speaker design shown during the event resembles a squished sphere with a circular glow and is tied to the Gemini experience.

Gemini for Home will gradually replace Google Assistant on Nest Hubs, Audio and Mini over time. Early access is planned for October, with both free and paid versions.

This move signals a shift from simple voice control to a more conversational and context aware home assistant. Google is betting on in house models to guide updates and pricing, aiming to keep users inside its ecosystem. The emphasis on multi step commands and live conversational search could raise expectations for a more capable but potentially more data hungry product as households rely on it for planning and decision making.

The question for users and regulators is how data is handled as the assistant grows, and whether the new paid tier creates a two tier experience. If Gemini Live proves reliable, rivals may feel pressure to raise their own conversational capabilities. The hardware tie to Nest devices could boost adoption but may also slow down rollout for those who do not own Google hardware.

Highlights

As Gemini for Home expands, its success will hinge on reliability and privacy as much as on smarts.