Tony Fadell:
This decision wasn’t made on a whim – Google has been in the mix in some way or another for about three years of our almost four-year history. In fact, my first meeting with Google as a Nester was before we’d launched. At the 2011 TED Conference, Erik Charlton and I huddled in a corner with Sergey Brin to show him a video and an early model of the Nest Learning Thermostat – he instantly got what we were doing and so did the rest of the Google team when we showed them. In May 2011, Google Ventures led our Series B round of financing, and in 2012, Series C. Time and time again, Googlers have shown themselves to be incredibly like-minded, supportive and as big of dreamers as we are. I know that joining Google will be an easy transition because we’re partnering with a company that gets what we do and who we are at Nest –and wants us to stay that way.
Best of luck. Continue making great products, you’ll be successful.
Still scares the hell out of me what could be done with the data. Understanding that Gmail gets scanned and used…but what would Google do with Nest data?
Well, they’d know when you were on vacation…
Auto Away -> Set Gmail Vacation Settings… 😀
OK, so they already knew that 🙂
I can’t shake the feeling that this is one of those blog posts that John Gruber should bookmark for later.
We are used to think Google in terms of data and personal information. But I think they dream bigger: They want to get the network – not as hardware, but as information bits and chunks that talk to each other. It’s about the same way they spend money on Tesla:
In the end, when all our electronic devices talk to each other, they talk Android, and then they talk with Google.
I’m not optimistic. Reading the announcement of Google’s purchase of Nest felt like reading an obituary.
And then Google sells an ad.
Let’s not forget that at the end of the day, Google is an advertising sales company.
“Continue making great products, you’ll be successful.”
But the question is, a “great product” for whom? As far as Google is concerned, a great product is one that gives them data to sell more lucrative ads.
Instead of earning the trust of customers, Google has set a precedent for buying its way into your home.
What happens if I install an August smart door lock and Canary home monitoring system, then wake up one morning to learn that Google has access to my door lock and security cams?
Time to cancel my preorders for both of those products.
The fear mongering is hilarious. Pessimists just bother me.
I’m with you Dave. So long as the products continue being great, they’ll be successful.
This is anti google site.
How many times does it have it be said
for you to move along.
Go Troll you own kind.
I love you too.
it’s neither fear mongering nor hilarious. google is an ad company where its users are the products, not the customers. Nest was a hardware company where its users were the customers, not the product. this matters to many buyers — in fact, id wager that had google released a learning thermostat under their own name it wouldnt have done as well or at all well. thus, they bought nest.
but you cant buy trust. and i dont trust google:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/18/google-privacy-settlement/
I loathe the “users are the products” rhetoric. It’s ridiculous.
No prob on not trusting Google. That’s your right but to push more rhetoric about Google attempting to buy our trust through Nest is ludicrous.
Again…pessimists are annoying. Just my opinion.
I don’t think selling ads will be the main income source once they have this amount of data. Like Apple which practically can monitor every move with your iOS device they can expand that by selling your life to governments, states, or whoever pays enough. Their knowledge is what electoral campaigns dream of. They can manage your future with that: You plan a vacation? They organize everything, car, hotel, spa, whatever. Not satisfied with your job? They contact your employer, draft a resume, tell your wife and handle your salary. They make money from those small fees all connected partners pay them. Because they know where you are heading by exploiting the algorithms of your past.
Take your tinfoil hat off, it’s clearly cutting off circulation to your brain.
Lucky me. I was just having a nightmare. But my nightmare might be a wet dream for others?