Google kills 3rd-party Assistant apps and games on Nest Hub

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One of the main reasons to use the Google Nest Hub is the tight integration with Google Assistant. You’re able to call upon it whenever you need to have something done. Third-party developers were able to develop products for the Nest Hub that use the assistant. However, those are going away, according to 9To5Google.

It’s great when Google Assistant can utilize first-party Google services, but third-party developers were also able to use the powerful voice assistant. They were able to create different books and activities that require speaking as a method of input. Some examples are picture books and family activities like quizzes and trivia.

However, Google is killing third-party voice support for Nest Hub devices

This is a disappointing bit of news for people who utilize these apps and games. Last year, almost to the day, Google announced that it was going to end support for these applications. The company gave us a one-year window, and that one year is up.

The reason for Google doing this is simply this: people just weren’t using these games. While this is a neat idea, it just wasn’t able to capture the public attention. There’s hardly any reason in keeping these services alive if no one is using them. Maybe something like this will catch on down the road, but, for the time being, it just didn’t get much traction.

There may be a bit of good news, however. While this functionality is leaving the Nest Hub, developers may still be able to bring their apps and games to other platforms. Google is working on allowing third-party Android apps to access Google Assistant.

This means that those developers who are developing for the Nest Hub may be able to move their applications to smartphones. This will definitely not be a one-to-one comparison, but it may find some success in tablets. They have a similar form factor to the Nest Hub, and they may be more convenient because they can be moved around. Hopefully, we will see this in the near future.

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