Google's commitment to Matter could unite the fragmented smart home industry

Google announced a giant slew of updates to its various software products at its I/O developer conference this week, and in addition to Android, Wear, Assistant and a ton of other news, it's not forgetting about the smart home. At the show, the company shared a few updates around its Nest and Android products that focus on a commitment to the recently renamed Matter ecosystem. As a recap, Matter was formerly known as Project CHIP, or Connected Home over IP. It's a collaboration between industry giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and more to standardize the historically fragmented smart home ecosystem. Matter will support a variety of protocols and assistants, including Siri, Alexa, the Google Assistant as well as Bluetooth, Ethernet, WiFi and Thread.