Google Home Now Lets Claude and ChatGPT Run Your Smart Home
Your smart home is about to get a lot less loyal. Google announced on Wednesday that Google Home now supports the Model Context Protocol — the open standard for connecting AI agents to tools — which means third-party AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT can now see, understand and control your connected home. The new Home MCP connector is rolling out in early preview starting this week, with availability expanding over the coming weeks. In Google's words, "any AI agent" that supports MCP can now "securely work with your smart home devices and event history." That is a sentence with enormous implications: the assistant that runs your house no longer has to be Google's. For years, the smart home has been a walled garden. Alexa ran Amazon's house, Google Assistant ran Google's, and never the twain would meet. What Google just did is crack that wall open — betting that the future of the smart home belongs not to whichever company makes the best spea...