Centrica’s UK energy subsidiary British Gas has turned to Google’s voice-assistant technology in the hope of dramatically cutting its costs – using Google Assistant to provide boiler outage troubleshooting services to its customers. This is despite the fact that Google’s Nest product line sits in direct competition with another of Centrica’s subsidiaries – the smart home platform Hive. The issue for Centrica is that Google and Amazon voice assistants are so widespread now that competitors in the smart home sector are somewhat forced to bend the knee – as trying to create an alternative is expensive and impractical. Aligning with the incumbent voice platforms gives British Gas a quick victory, whereas trying to bring an in-house assistant to market would…