San Francisco, Feb 8 (IANS): Google has announced that Nest, the US-based manufacturers of home automation equipment that it bought in 2014 for $3.2 billion, was now being merged into the tech giant's hardware team.

"We are excited to bring the Nest and Google Hardware teams together. The goal is to supercharge Nest's mission: to create a more thoughtful home, one that takes care of the people inside it and the world around it," Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President, Hardware, wrote in a blog late Wednesday.

Since Nest joined Google four years ago, the team has experienced incredible momentum. The company doubled its hardware portfolio last year by selling more devices in 2017 than the previous two years combined.

"By working together, we'll continue to combine hardware, software and services to create a home that is safer, friendlier to the environment, smarter and even helps you save money-built with Google's Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Assistant at the core," Osterloh added.

Google has sold tens of millions of products for the home last year, as more people use the Google Assistant to listen to their favourite music, control their connected devices and get useful information about their day, the company said.

"We have had a head start on collaborating since our teams already work closely together, and today we're excited to make Nest an integral part of Google's big bet on hardware," Osterloh added.

According to TechCrunch, Google also said that Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz would report to Osterloh and the company is not planning to lay off employees as part of the merge.

Last week, the tech giant finalised a deal to spend $1.1 billion acquiring a large part of HTC's hardware operation.