The 2010s ushered in the modern age of smart home technology, complete with affordable voice assistants, design-forward thermostats that adjust for you and robot vacuums you control from your phone. 

But smart home products existed long before the 21st century. 

Let’s travel back in time to acknowledge the early tech that inspired today’s smart home innovations. While they weren’t called “smart home” products and they didn’t sit in a designated section on store shelves, they shared the same core goal as the 2020 smart home: to make daily life easier. 

Here I’ll highlight eight devices that were important precursors to the smart home industry of today. This isn’t an exhaustive list. Instead it focuses on products that both provided a bridge to newer technologies and continue to be

Last week Amazon dropped its annual armada of new products on us — now it’s Google’s turn. The company’s Launch Night In stream Wednesday follows its unveiling of the Pixel 4A budget phone in August. That event confirmed the existence of its next flagship phone, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 4A 5G. They were launched today, along with a new Chromecast and a new Nest-branded smart speaker, the Nest Audio. There were few surprises, however, other than the Hold for Me phone feature, which puts those awful you’re-on-hold-forever calls in Google Assistant’s hands.

The Pixel 5 announcement, as with Google’s previous flagship phones, has been leakier than ancient plumbing (or perhaps, as CNET’s Lynn La suspects, the “leaks” are part of Google’s marketing strategy).

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ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — With more consumers experimenting in the kitchen as they spend more time at home, LG Electronics USA is expanding its industry-first, slow-melting LG Craft Ice™ technology to 19 refrigerator models while adding convenient new features designed to inspire consumers to take their everyday kitchens to the next level.

Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8772151-lg-electronics-craft-ice-refrigerators/

Borrowers with 700 credit scores were quoted an average rate of 3.433% to secure a 30-year fixed-rate purchase mortgage on Wednesday, according to Money’s survey of over 8,000 lenders across the United States. At this credit score, roughly the national average, the average rate for a 30-year refinance was 4.366%. Our rates include discount points and are for borrowers putting 20% down.

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Borrowers in Washington, D.C. were quoted the lowest mortgage rates on Wednesday—at 3.258%. Those in Georgia saw the highest average rate at 3.678%. Nationwide, borrowers with the highest credit scores, 740 and above, were quoted rates averaging 3.088%, while those with credit of 640 or below were given rates of 4.892%—a 1.804 percentage point spread.

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You may be able to negotiate a lower rate if you shop around or if you