Four years after Google officially acquired Nest, the group that makes smart thermostats is being brought in to work with Google's hardware team.

Google confirmed today the Nest and Google hardware teams are joining forces. The big goal here is artificial intelligence, Google Assistant, and being better at building them into Nest's smart home devices.

"All of Google's investments in machine learning and AI, they can very clearly benefit Nest products. It just makes sense to be developing them together," said Rick Osterloh, Google's SVP of Hardware. Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz will report directly to Osterloh under this new arrangement.

While Nest and Google already have their hardware plans set for 2018, the two companies will start co-developing products later on. Google plans to offer more hardware bundles that include Google and Nest products, and Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz says that people will eventually be able to use their Google accounts with their Nest app.

Google acquired Nest back in 2014, but Nest has been a separate division of Alphabet rather than a part of Google. Now Nest and Google's hardware teams will be working together, which will hopefully result in improved Nest hardware that work better with Google services like Assistant and Google Accounts.

Have you ever used a Nest product?