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This is neither the first time Google's done something like this to customers, nor the first time Tony Fadell has been directly involved. When they pulled Googl
by jimrandomh 11y ago
This is neither the first time Google's done something like this to customers, nor the first time Tony Fadell has been directly involved. When they pulled Google Glass from the market, it was concurrent with moving the Glass team to Fadell's leadership. They didn't go quite so far as to push an update to brick devices, but they left the software in a broken state, and refused to open source their fork of Android so users could fix it themselves. Nest has also burned a lot of Google's goodwill with badly designed smoke detectors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY) and thermostats (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat-glitch-battery-dies-software-freeze.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat-gl...).
And then there's this, on a recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105510
> "I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there."
> "Tony literally stood up at an all-hands after the Alphabet thing and said "Fuck being Googley" (direct quote)."
I think Google/Alphabet need to take a serious look at what Nest has been doing to their brand. A few thousand very-pissed-off people here and a few thousand very-pissed-off people there add up to a serious liability for a company like Google.
- joezydeco 11y agoA few thousand very-pissed-off people here and a few thousand very-pissed-off people there... s/people/early adopters/
- scrollaway 11y agoEarly adopters are people too. Of course, that doesn't mean they're not pissed off, so nothing in your comment invalidates the parent's. Edit: I assumed ill intent. Corrected it.
- jimrandomh 11y agoI read that slightly differently; selectively pissing off early adopters is worse, since they disproportionately influence products' odds of success.
- joezydeco 11y agoExactly. Google thrives on early adopters waiting in line for and spinning up their newest shiny thing. Sorry if the sarcasm was lost there.
- scrollaway 11y agoIt was lost on me, yes. Thanks for clearing it up.
- astrodust 11y agoNothing says "fuck you" quite like pissing all over the people that helped make your platform a success by being the first to commit to your product.
- fezz 11y agoThey can easily fix this. If they don't, it speaks volumes about how Nest/Google/Alphabets values customer relationships. Take all the other google services and imagine what would happen if google were just as reckless, especially with long life products like home installed devices. Home automation installation services or even contractors would also be cautious about Nest.
- josh2600 11y agoEmpathy is not a core competency of google as an enterprise.
- fucking_tragedy 11y agoI see it as an extension of their consumer software policy. Have little to no customer service, even when money is involved, letting products stagnate for years and frequently pulling the plug on services. Which is scary, because this hardware is dependent on Google-owned software and services.
- click170 11y agoThese shenanigans by Google and the numerous reports of the problems with Nest and their smoke detectors have basically guaranteed I don't include Google devices in my home automation setup. I would rather manually muck around with a raspberry pi and some random sensors bought online than rely on a Google product at this point. There's a lot of room for a vendor to come in with open products, a pledge to maintain that open-ness, and decent integration to really take over the home automation market. I really feel like all the existing products are too proprietary to be of any interest to us home automation geeks.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoYeah, unfortunately, there's a huge middle ground not being tackled. I use INSTEON devices, which are proprietary, but can only interface outside through my PC's serial adapter (or a cloud hub, which I obviously didn't buy). I want consumer-quality switches and such in my house, so this was the obvious choice. But then the open source hardware stuff is almost entirely limited to 'build it yourself' boards. And sure, I could buy some Arduino and Raspberry Pi hardware (I actually have a lot of it lying around) and spend a bunch of time working on it, but then it wouldn't be a nice wall unit like my switches I have. There's a huge open space here. It's a market just asking for someone to step in and make products.
- rconti 11y agoI know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.
- fludlight 11y ago> how does he still have a job There is a lag between management incompetence and revenue.
- Gustomaximus 11y agoOften these people are very personable when they want to be. They use this trait to manage up but only those below them, and without the power to make changes, see the real person. This is why and exectutive team needs to be themself spending time at the working level or have eyes/ears there.
- Gustomaximus 11y agoOften these people are very personable when they want to be. They use this trait to manage up but only those below them, and without the power to make changes, see the real person. This is why and exectutive team needs to be themself spending time at the working level or have eyes/ears there.
- deelowe 11y agoLot's of people are throwing Google and alphabet in to the same bucket here. Please don't do that. The alphabet companies are free to be ran however they wish and Nest is an extreme example of NOT running a company the Google way. When the alphabet change happened, this became quite clear in just a few months time internally. What you're seeing here is further evidence of that.
- imaginenore 11y agoNobody gives a crap about these semantic games. Nest is owned by Google. https://nest.com/about/ https://nest.com/about/
- deelowe 11y agoI'm trying to explain (perhaps poorly?) that the change is not simply semantic. No one who is part of Google proper has any say in what nest, glass or those other companies do at this point. None of the culture, support etc... transfers over. The CEOs of these new alphabet companies are free to do as they please. What you're seeing here is this in action. Saying Google are somehow accountable for nest or glass is like saying that dropbox are accountable for the actions of reddit. They are literally that disconnected now when it comes to how the businesses are managed.
- ilyanep 11y agoThey all ultimately answer to Larry Page, presumably.
- deelowe 11y agoAll of the CEOs? Sure. Sundar manages Google though.
- jkelsey 11y agoConsumers don't care how about Google/Alphabet organizes itself. Google owns Nest; that fact can't be avoided. When you own a company that intentionally bricks their customers' $300 devices for no other reason that they don't want to support them anymore, you're going to have to deal with the negative perception that it creates.
- eli 11y agoDo you have some beef with him? I'm not a big fan of this sort of personal attack of someone's character on HN.