It seems that Amazon and Google are at it again with their feud. Amazon will not feature any future products from Google’s line of smart home products and Nest. As a result, Nest won’t be restocking those items currently listed on the retailer’s website once they sell out.
Business Insider says that during a recent conference call between the two companies, Amazon told Google’s team about their decision to stop selling new Nest products including thermostats and home security systems. A source familiar with the call said that the order to the Amazon team came from as high as CEO Jeff Bezos:
On that call, says the person, Amazon told Nest that the decision came from the top — and that it had nothing to do with the quality of Nest products, which had great reviews on Amazon. Nest employees who were on the call ended the discussion under the impression that the decision had come from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, although Amazon’s retail team didn’t explicitly say that at any point, according to a person familiar with the call.
As a result of Amazon’s decision, Nest decided to stop selling any of its products through Amazon, meaning the limited number of Nest devices listed on Amazon today are expected to disappear from the site once current inventory is sold out, according to a person familiar with the matter.
At this time, it’s not clear if third-party sellers will be allowed to sell Nest device on Amazon. Business Insider notes that Amazon is still trying very hard to sell consumers on its voice assistant, Alexa, believing that the technology will eventually become as ubiquitous as smartphones and tablets (because the company missed out on these two). The company already moved into the smart home products with the $1 billion acquisition of Ring, the doorbell company.
It makes some sense that Amazon has put a stop to selling Google-branded products. The company is competing with Google in both areas. Both companies want to monitor customers’ smart home usage and try to one up each other to build better ad profiles.
