A report from The Wall Street Journal claims that Google's parent company, Alphabet, is "considering" folding Nest into the Google hardware team. The report says the move would allow Google to "more tightly integrate its services with Nest," which would let Google compete better in the connected home market. The report doesn't go into much more detail than that. Questions about what would happen to the Nest brand or how exactly a Google integration would work are left unanswered.

Nest was acquired by Google in 2014, where it was made into "a Google company"—a company that existed inside Google but was more or less run independently. When the Alphabet era began in 2015, Nest was spun off into an independent company under the Alphabet umbrella. In 2016, Nest CEO Tony Fadell left the company, and since then Alphabet has not seemed quite sure what to do with Nest.

Nest has struggled inside Google (and later Alphabet) since its acquisition in 2014. The expectation was that an infusion of Google's cash and resources would supercharge Nest, and while the company quadrupled its headcount under Google/Alphabet and acquired companies like Dropcam and Revolv, new products (other than a rebranded Dropcam) were few and far between. Nest's smart thermostat and smoke detector existed before the acquisition. The only new products under Fadell's tenure were rebranded Dropcams.

Fadell was a former Apple employee before starting Nest and patterned his new company after Apple, with himself as the "Steve Jobs" figure in the center of everything. When Fadell left, there was lots of speculation that Nest was dead inside Alphabet, to the point that the new CEO, Marwan Fawaz, had to send a memo to employees saying the company was not for sale. After Fadell's departure, Nest finally launched its long-rumored home security system, the $500 "Nest Secure" and shared plans for a video doorbell system due in 2018.

The hardware group inside Google, led by former Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh, was created some time last year. This group's output stands in contrast with that of Nest, as it has pumped out lots of hardware with the "Google" branding. In its roughly 1.5-year history, the group has released the Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 smartphones, the Pixelbook Chromebook, the Google Home and Google Home Mini, two versions of Daydream VR goggles, a 4K Chromecast, and the Google Pixel Buds.

Regardless of what Nest's future is, Nest and Google have been moving closer together. The two companies have shared engineers to make sure Nest integrations work well on Google Home. Nest was given some stage time at Google's October 4 Pixel 2 launch event, and it often has some space at Google I/O. Nest products are also sold on "The Google Store," which is a little strange given that Nest is supposed to be a separate company. The WSJ report says that Google and Nest already combined their supply chain teams last year, and merging would allow for the combination of other departments like legal, marketing, public relations, and retail distribution.