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We're really excited about expanding
what you can do with smart home on an Android phone. We've been working a lot lately on expanding the number of devices that you can control, like vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, fans, coffee makers, and kettles. Because they can all really help you make your household just run a little smoother. You can now start, pause, and stop these devices from your phone. These new features will be available to anyone with Assistant enabled devices or the Google home app. We think about these new features in the context of routines and finding ways to automate your house. When I think about my goodnight routine, I have my smart blinds automatically closed, as well as ensure that my doors are locked and all the lights are off.

As we think about these new features in the context of routines, I'm really excited about the possibility of adding the vacuum cleaner to your 'I'm leaving' routine. So as you leave the house you'll go about your business, but you'll come home to a cleaner home. As we talked to users, one thing we saw
consistently was a folder called smart home, and this would have 10 apps in it
and it would just be full of different places to go. The Assistant allows you, with your voice, to just get what you need to get done. And in the same way that works, the home app allows you to quickly take those same actions via touch. It's a unique challenge, because we're working with smart home partners who own the actual physical devices that you're interacting with.

But we need to define a way for our technology to talk to theirs. Smart home partners use our API to integrate their device functionality. What this means is they'll define what functionalities are available. So all light bulbs have on/off, but some light bulbs have brightness. Other ones have color, and some have both. And so they tell us what it can do, and that's what allows us to offer this control to the user. The dream is figuring out ways where
we can take care of your house for you without you having to think about it..