The likely outcome of the smart home standards race – a head-to-head between Bluetooth LE (BLE) and a unified 802.15.4-based protocol – came a step closer this week, as the ZigBee Alliance announced extended cooperation with rival Thread Group. This sets the stage for Google to achieve its goal of uniting those two ecosystems, bringing together the two main wireless mesh platforms built on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer. Google is the thrust behind the Thread Alliance, which was set up in July 2014 to promote the protocol – an implementation of the 6LoWPAN standard devised by Google subsidiary Nest – as the de facto technology for smart home personal area networks (PANs). As such, it was looking to influence…