The main takeaway from the article (they don't make this argument directly, but I'm inferring it) is that the main opportunity is for a cloud/services company t

The main takeaway from the article (they don't make this argument directly, but I'm inferring it) is that the main opportunity is for a cloud/services company to provide a standard and backbone services for all the individual appliance manufacturers to connect to. So we wouldn't be seeing a Nest washing machine, but rather an LG washing machine that connects to your (for example) Nest account. This still leaves an opportunity for Alphabet (who knows better than them how to offer a free service and profit off the data?), but leaves Nest in a category similar to Nexus - a line of HW that demonstrates the value / usefulness of the services, but is not really a key profit center for the company. It's not bad, but it's not somewhere I personally would want to work.