I mean they've been doing the physical incarnation of Google Assistant for a while now; it predates Homepod by more than a year. There's no arguing that Google is anything but capricious and loaded with privacy issues, but I think it's safe to assume at this point that they're not going to be dropping the hardware any time soon. The original Google Home is still getting feature updates and I doubt that's going to change even with a replacement coming out.

Has Google ever abandoned consumer hardware, or their obligations to Nest customers?

I don't know how the chain of obligations to Nest customers tracks through, but [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/4/11362928/google-nest-revol...

The Nexus player was a bit of a debacle.

But I agree with you.. they're generally better about hardware support than software.

The "Nest" rebrand of the Google Home devices to me signifies that they're really investing in this consumer IoT product line. That and they're (arguably) the dominant player in the space.

> The Nexus player was a bit of a debacle.

Nexus Player still works though.

I don't quite know where the saga is now, but for a while it seemed like they were killing off Nest's 3rd-party API.

Well, sure. Look at the Pixel phones: the Pixel 1 was released Oct 2016 and support ended Dec 2019, and the Pixel 2 was released Oct 2017 and they'll be dropping support this year after updating to Android 11.

Even with Nest specifically they dropped Works With Nest support last year, effectively killing off the many integrations that had been built since 2014 in favor of their newer Works with Google Assistant program.

Then there's my beloved 2013 Google Glass Explorer Edition, which still works perfectly but which Google stopped supporting February 25, 2020.

https://mashable.com/article/google-glass-explorer-edition-f...

Well I've sure got a bricked revolve hub at home courtesy of Google.

Wasn't apple fined for slowing down older iphones?