Google announced end-of-life dates today for products relying on the Nest app that won't carry over to the new Google Home. If you own any Nest Secure or Dropcam home-security products, you have a year to use them before they become paperweights. Phasing out old and incompatible hardware could signal that the arrival of Google's more customizable new Home app is drawing near. Nest Secure will continue to work until April 8th, 2024. To ease the blow, Google is offering some freebies to customers -- as the company often does when its products head to the Google Graveyard.

Google's decision to bring Assistant-enabled voice controls to its Nest Secure system is causing a stir almost a year after the integration was rolled out. The problem is no one actually knew the security device, launched in September, 2017, packed a microphone in the first place. Google built a mic into its Nest Guard -- a small hub with a keypad on top that communicates with the other sensors in its Secure system -- but failed to mention it in its product materials, reports Business Insider. Asked about the microphone's existence, Google said it was "never intended to be a secret." "[It] should have been listed in the tech specs. That was an error on our part," a company spokesperson told Business Insider.

As its name suggests, the temperature sensor works in conjunction with the Nest Thermostat (and the Nest Thermostat E) to let you control the temperature in individual rooms. So if you set one in the bedroom, for example, you can then configure the Nest app to have it so that room is colder or warmer than the rest of the house. The price for a single unit is $39 or $99 for a pack of three. You can pre-order it starting today, and it'll begin shipping next month. As part of the above announcement, Nest recently gave us a demo of some of its connected home products to walk us through some of the new features.

"We have better light rings than any other products on the market," says Adam Mittleman. This is a sentence that I have never before heard uttered by anyone, even after a long time living on Planet Earth. But because I am visiting Nest, and Mittleman is its Head of Product Design, working on a new gadget that this startup-turned-controversial Alphabet division is launching, I can't say I am surprised. After all, light rings--the shimmering glow-circles that allow digital appliances to provide feedback--have been a leitmotif for Nest throughout its eventful journey of disrupting the home. Nest has given a lot of thought to them. Naturally, there is a light ring on the Nest Guard, which is the hub of the Nest Secure suite. That suite has been in the works since well before the company was acquired by Google in January 2014 and then underwent a second recalibration in October 2015 when Google made Nest one of the divisions ("bets") in the Alphabet archipelago. Depending on the message the new Nest Guard wants to convey, its ring might glow red, yellow or green.