I’ve been hearing about the smart house for as long as I’ve been alive. How one day everything in the house will run on the same computer system and you’ll be able to control it all from a computer at home or at work. Sounds magical and still hasn’t happened. The reason is that it would take a whole lot of interoperability between the makers of the appliances, the software, the computer equipment. Everything would have to be on a common protocol. AND EVERYONE WANTS TO OWN THE PROTOCOL. If you’re Sony, you don’t want to play by Microsoft’s rules. If you’re Sears, you don’t want to do what Cisco tells you to do. And no one gets along and nothing gets done.
So now here comes Google with a plan to have apps run your house (lights, fridge, coffee maker, and beyond) in a system called Android@Home. Google is “hoping to spark a wave of creativity similar to what Apple started when it opened the iPhone apps store,” and capturing the home app market. Will it work? It could. Yeah, but will it? Well, nothing ever has before!
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