Tech Strategy & Big Tech · August 2026

“It feels like both Google and Amazon are trying to get out of the smart home, honestly.” — Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Vergecast

Tuohy and Nilay Patel have spent the episode asking Gemini and Alexa to do ordinary household jobs, with mixed results; neither assistant could add her work calendar. Patel has just argued that OpenAI will never touch the smart home because the Matter specification is a rabbit hole of disaster. Tuohy's closing read is that the two companies already in the category are backing out of it.

Transcript

The Vergecast Around 37:56 into the episode
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

We will see. We will come back once Apple has done something with Apple Home and Siri, because right now you can't really use Siri, the new Siri, as you've demonstrated to control your smart home. So we'll be interesting to see where that goes and if OpenAI comes up with something great in the smart home space too. So will you come back and we can talk about it? Oh, yeah. I'm

Nilay Patel

dying to know. Again, the idea that there's somebody at OpenAI who's sitting there with the matter specification every day and being like, you want me to do what? Like it just seems very obvious that they will not engage with the smart home because if you that's just a rabbit hole of disaster for them.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

It feels like both Google and Amazon are trying to get out of the smart home, honestly. Honestly, that's what it feels like to me. But yeah, yeah. Oh, well, thank you, Deli, for joining me on your show. And yes, I will. We will have to come back and chat more about this. Oh, yeah,

Nilay Patel

we're in for quite a run between half and hope and I where many more episodes of this are

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

coming. Excellent. Great. That's it for The Vergecast. Remember to subscribe to The Verge for at-free episodes of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and more. We love to hear from you. Email us at Vergecast at the Verge.com or call the hotline at 866-Verge11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show was produced by Josh Carhas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuck. Bye!

Speaker 4

Mama! Sierra de los Cariben, how do you laugh at it? Similar.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode