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Amazon's Alexa will be able to control Nest and Honeywell thermostats this month

Amazon's Alexa will be able to control Nest and Honeywell thermostats this month

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Amazon takes another big step into your home

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Last month Amazon started allowing its Alexa voice assistant to control smart home thermostats. Now, Amazon's virtual assistant will be compatible with two major brands: Honeywell and Alphabet-owned Nest. Both companies' Wi-Fi-connected thermostats, which are usually controlled by smartphone apps, should work with Alexa by the end of March, Amazon says. Alexa will also start working with some of Insteon's smart home thermostats, too.

Thermostat support launched in February, with the Ecobee 3 being the first you could control through Alexa. It's technically possible to link Alexa with other thermostats today through the app IFTTT, but direct integration should make it a lot easier to use. It's critical, too, if Amazon really wants Echo to be the control system for the smart home. And judging by its rapid expansion of Alexa (and today's expansion of the Echo speaker line), it seems like that's exactly what Amazon wants to do.

Read next: Amazon's Echo Dot lets you put Alexa inside any speaker

Correction: Nest is now owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company, not Google itself, as this article initially stated.