Google Gemini is breathing new life into aging Nest hubs and cameras, reversing years of Assistant feature cuts that nearly drove users to rival platforms.
Google cut 28 features from Assistant in early 2024 and quietly dropped seven more in March 2025. For millions of Nest device owners, those were not routine deprecations but an extended divestiture of the product they had built their homes around.
Gemini's arrival in Google Home, which Brady Snyder at Android Authority has now run for roughly eight months, is reversing that trajectory. Snyder's setup spans nearly a decade of hardware: a 2018 Home Hub, a 2019 Nest Hub Max, and a 2021 Nest Battery Doorbell. All three are functioning again under Gemini's coordination, without any hardware replacement.
By the end of Assistant's tenure, Snyder was ready to leave the platform entirely. The new Matter interoperability standard had given him a practical exit route, and he writes that at peak frustration he could not decide whether Google Assistant or Siri was the worse digital assistant. That sentence lands harder than any benchmark.
The long decline
Google never declared a single moment when Assistant was winding down. The product contracted in waves: 28 capabilities removed, then seven more, then hardware that simply stopped responding to commands. Automations broke silently. Requests went unanswered. This pattern of attrition, rather than a clean transition, left users uncertain whether their devices were broken or their expectations were wrong.
What Gemini brings to the same hardware is something closer to coherence. Android Authority's review describes the experience as "a joy to use" — a phrase that says less about Gemini's absolute quality than about how damaged the baseline had become. The underlying model handles ambiguous requests and coordinates across devices in ways the previous assistant rarely managed.
The installed base opportunity
The fact that Gemini runs on 2018 display hardware points toward a backward-compatible deployment strategy. Google has not publicly detailed its inference architecture, but consistent performance across three hardware generations suggests either meaningful on-device model compression or a cloud-routing approach that keeps older endpoints viable.
Millions of Nest displays, cameras, and speakers sold over the past decade now become candidate endpoints for artificial intelligence features without a forced hardware refresh cycle. Google appears to be threading software capability through its existing installed base rather than requiring users to buy new devices. That is a different commercial bet than Apple has made with HomeKit or Amazon with successive Alexa hardware generations.
Context and competitive pressure
The Gemini rollout to Google Home arrives as expectations for consumer AI products keep rising. Forbes noted earlier this year that ChatGPT now counts 800 million monthly active users, a figure that resets the floor for what any AI product must achieve to be considered credible. Google's smart home push is partly a direct answer to that competitive pressure.
Talent flows between labs add another wrinkle. TechCrunch reported this week that Noam Shazeer, a Gemini co-lead at Google DeepMind and co-author of the 2017 Transformer paper "Attention Is All You Need," is joining OpenAI. Losing one of the foundational minds behind modern generative AI raises a reasonable question about whether Gemini's current product momentum is durable.
For home users, the more immediate issue is trust recovery. Smart home habits erode slowly and rebuild slowly. Snyder has run Gemini across his setup since October 2025, roughly eight months of daily use across old and new devices. That is a meaningful sample, but the real test is whether Google can sustain reliability as it scales the rollout and adds new features. Assistant's capabilities peaked before they declined. The pattern is worth keeping in mind.
The question going forward is whether Google treats Gemini in the home as a long-term commitment or as the next phase of a familiar cycle. Users who rebuilt their routines once after Assistant's decline are unlikely to rebuild them a second time.
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Frequently asked questions
What happened to Google Assistant on Nest devices?
Google removed 28 features from Assistant in early 2024 and cut seven more in March 2025, causing widespread reliability failures on Nest hubs and cameras. Commands were ignored and automations stopped working.
When did Google switch Nest devices from Assistant to Gemini?
The transition to Gemini as the default Google Home assistant began rolling out in 2025. Some users, including the Android Authority reviewer cited here, have had access since October 2025.
Does Gemini work on older Nest Hub hardware from 2018?
According to eight months of testing by Android Authority, a 2018 Home Hub is running reliably with Gemini, suggesting Google's deployment strategy supports legacy hardware without a required upgrade.
Will Google continue supporting older Nest devices with future Gemini updates?
Google has made no public commitment about long-term legacy hardware support. The current rollout covers devices dating to 2018, but the history of Assistant feature cuts means users have legitimate reason to monitor the situation closely.
