> Wi-fi thermostat with an API - no 3rd part website needed. Why can't they all be this way? Because without that third-party website the company selling you t

> Wi-fi thermostat with an API - no 3rd part website needed. Why can't they all be this way? Because without that third-party website the company selling you the gear (hopefully) has no access to the data you are generating — anything from trivial and benign telemetry to full-scale data harvesting. The vendor can also easily reach you for advertising new products and services, because you keep coming to them. For some vendors this may be an integral part of their business model. Technically, it is also harder to let you turn on the thermostat from 100km away if you have to host the API yourself; not all ISPs support hosting your own services (some even forbid it). That third-party website is much easier to host, and if your smart appliance cannot be reached directly by calling its API, it can probably still poll its vendors central service to see if any commands are waiting for it.