One of our favourite little smart home introductions has just been bought by another smart home juggernaut, and there’s a pretty clear reason why.
If you’ve been looking for a way to make your home just that much smarter, a smart doorbell makes a lot of sense. The idea is sound, too: you put a smart camera at the very front of your home, and it not only provides a doorbell, but also a view to anyone trying to enter.
You might not even be home, and Ring’s smart doorbell will patch through the video, allowing you to see if the person trying to enter is legit, or if you just want them to drop something off. It’s almost like having a security guard at your home, and a little like living in one of those modern apartment blocks where there’s a video system to stop people from automatically entering, except on your phone.
Ring even started rolling out support last year for Amazon Alexa, something Australians are just now beginning to see through Amazon’s arrival in Australia. Granted, the support is only found on select Ring devices, and it doesn’t work on Amazon’s speakers, only on its video devices, but it’s a start, and it has led to something else.
This week, Amazon has announced that it is buying Ring, essentially making its presence known in the home security space known, and its place in the smart home space even more solidified, as one of the world’s biggest eStores takes over what was becoming one of the most notable presences in both.
Reuters reported the move, and said that before the launch, Amazon was working on its own smart lock beforehand, but has since opted to buy Ring instead, making its devices already out there and in the hands of customers.
As for what this means for Australian customers, probably nothing. Ring already releases products locally, and Amazon has also launched here, so expect nothing to change on that front. Our guess is that now the companies will be able to build even more integration, and that Ring will now technically have the R&D of an even bigger company behind to make its products even better.
And that means Google and the Nest line of security products, not to mention the Google Assistant, is likely in the targeting sights of Amazon, and a smart home fight is about to get very, very interesting.
