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> I’m a Works with Nest developer. Will I be able to access and control Nest devices moving forward? > No. The Actions on Google Smart Home platform does not p

> I’m a Works with Nest developer. Will I be able to access and control Nest devices moving forward? > No. The Actions on Google Smart Home platform does not provide open API access to Nest devices, so it cannot be used to access and control Nest devices. Instead, managing and controlling Google Home, Nest, and thousands of third-party smart home devices is done through the Google Home app and the Google Assistant. Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight.

dotBen 7y ago
Yup, they just did a Twitter. I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large ecosystem where there isn't an alignment of clear economic interest. Google of all people doing this just made it tougher for everyone else to maintain confidence in large vendor platforms.
- itsaidpens 7y ago
  No one should have expected Google to maintain focus on anything.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Microsoft: embrace extend extinguish Google: Hold my Kombucha!
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  > Yup, they just did a Twitter. You misspelled Sauron. One app to rule them all, One app to find them, One app to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
- zmmmmm 7y ago
  Well, the good news is that Google is kind of outing itself as a true outlier in that space. They clearly do not care at all about hurting developers that build on their platforms and there is enough daylight between them and other large tech companies on this that you probably don't need to extrapolate from Google to the entire tech world. Makes me sad to say it as someone who has often defended Google in the past, but I can't on this.
- _jal 7y ago
  If you build on someone else's platform, the best case is you get to be a sharecropper and can make money as long as you don't make so much that your platform-betters get jealous. The more typical case is this, where you get to spend your time and money doing real-world R&D and discovery of what works for them, for free. If you're going to dance with a vampire, don't be surprised when it bites you.
  - pm90 7y ago
    > If you build on someone else's platform, But isn't that the height of specialization? What does a platform mean anyways if its only used for one thing and not by others? It it somewhat unfortunate that things like this make it abundantly clear that such a reality is not possible.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Platform is nothing but a sales&marketing word. It means whatever the owner wants it to.
      - mcny 7y ago
        Google positions angular as a platform.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      It is possible. We just have to prioritize open standards much more than we have been doing in the last decade. History really repeats itself in this regard. First we get ourselves in a tight situation with lots of closed platforms, which is bad for everyone. Then someone comes along, spouting a new philosophy of openness (Stallman comes to mind). The philosophy takes hold and open technology flourishes for a while. But then a huge corporation appears, offering to contribute to this new abundant ecosystem with great new things. By now, people are too relaxed and optimistic, so they readily accept this. Yet, little by little, the corporation exploits this, seizing more and more control, until we get right back where we started.
  - krisgenre 7y ago
- cortesoft 7y ago
  I would worry about ANY company that is completely reliant on any other one company. You should never get in that situation.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Here's a note, straight from quotes file, I took around the original Twitter fiasco, and have since reposted or mentioned on HN a few times on occasions similar to this: * Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." Strangely, it seems to describe recent (2012/2013) situation with API of Twitter perfectly. -- Twitter did that twice[0] already, but it's a lesson people have to learn and relearn repeatedly: this is what happens when you build a business entirely around someone else's platform. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530
  - zimablue 7y ago
    [Spoiler alert, Hyperion series] That sounds totally lifted from the Hyperion series, but maybe the idea is earlier than that, does anyone have a proposed source for that idea that's earlier than 1989?
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      The writers were big Sci-Fi fans. The Asari were heavily influenced by the Minbari of Babylon 5. There are lots of other callouts to classic Sci-Fi in the series.
      - j03m1 7y ago
        That ending tho. Unforgivable.
        XaoDaoCaoCao 7y ago
        I will always be mad about the ME3 ending. If reincarnation is something that happens, my reincarnated self will be mad about the ME3 ending from birth. What a godamn waste.
- jfoster 7y ago
  It's worse than Twitter. Twitter made a strategic decision (correct or not) that applied across their entire business. Google are making this decision and calculating or hoping that it's in isolation from the rest of their business. That really doesn't seem to be the case. For the rest of their business' life, Google APIs will be met with skepticism about their long-term prospects. That sucks, because it doesn't seem good for anyone. Not good for Google. Not good for their customers. Not good for 3rd party developers.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    Per many comments left on HN, the people that this does benefit are the PMs. It seems that a well-worn path to promotion at google is to launch products. Hence, the reason we have umpteen chat apps. Once the promotion occurs, it seems, the product is all but forgotten, having served it's purpose: a raise. The divocring of incentives at google are at fault. The PMs aren't incentivied to do what is best for google, as it conflict with what is best for the PMs' families, college funds, mortgages, and health care. Hence, they do what is best for them at the expense of google.
  - telchar 7y ago
    I've already held that opinion of Google products for some time after seeing what a ghost town Sites and Docs are, and the shutdowns of Reader, G+, Wave, etc. At best it seems that you can count on a product silently losing support for years as a hint that you should migrate.
- oldjokes 7y ago
  Google and Amazon are ruthlessly strangling tech startups and smaller mom & pop shops that latch on to something and see a big spike in sales. They have all the data on these companies already, and people are just waiting to jump in and takeover or destroy a company completely regardless of industry or location. They just borg cube consume any success and very few people make any money in this process. This is happening every day, multiple times per day. That's a way bigger problem than relying on an API or building some app in garden.
  - shostack 7y ago
    Do you have sources to cite on this?
    - busymom0 7y ago
      Reminds me of this: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
netsec_burn 7y ago
Isn't this anti-competitive with Amazon?
joshmccormack 7y ago
“I’m a Works with Nest developer.” Not anymore you’re not.
- reustle 7y ago
  Sounds like the perfect time to transition to a "`Works with Nest` to `Works with Google Assistant` Conversion Consultant"
telltruth 7y ago
At Google, no one wants to work on existing things. You must create new product/feature to get promoted. Then you move on and thing gets shutdown. This is direct consequences of their internal incentive structure.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost. PowerShell still relies on conhost. Do you mean PowerShell ISE instead of plain PowerShell or do you mean cmd.exe instead of conhost?
    - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
      You're right, cmd.exe not conhost.
  - nikbackm 7y ago
    It's not really possible to substantially improve either conhost or cmd due to backwards compatibility considerations. The risk of breaking something for someone is just too high.
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      And some people dont realize the amount of work Microsoft puts into backwards compatibility. Just look at articles describing the leaked Windows source they describe Microsoft putting in code to path third party Windows software to make sure it still works. This is also why Wine struggles from version / config to version / config. They cant account for every edge case the way Microsoft does / has. Microsoft by comparison has unlimited resources while Wine is just volunteers who can only test so much software.
kristianc 7y ago
> Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight. Has it really, or does it simply mean that access is going to be through Google’s API going forward? It doesn’t seem super clear, but I can see why Google wouldn’t want to maintain two separate APIs.
- Klathmon 7y ago
  From what I can see so far, there isn't any way to replicate 90% of the functionality through the assistant APIs, and even their FAQ and messaging seems to be reinforcing that they won't be adding it. For example, you can't grab images from a camera through the assistant API, you can't get notification of a doorbell ring, you can't get notified when one of the devices detects a person.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    The owner of the device is definitely told all the data about the camera, facial recog and all. You, who paid money and installed a device, aren't the owner. Google is. You are a used. You aren't even qualified as a user.
gerbilly 7y ago
Reminds me of this article by Courtney Love comparing the music industry to sharecropping: https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
TheTruth1234 7y ago
What a joke ... f@ck Google. Seriously. I'm not even a Nest developer, but everything Google touches now turns to sh!t.
Zenst 7y ago
Reading thru it, it is not as brutal as it sounds, more that the they merged it into the Google Assistant API, removing direct access permission to the NEST device (remember microphone-gate with NEST) and consolidating those permissions into Assistant. Whilst they are killing it off, they have a transition. However, as far as timelines go - August 2019 kill off date for the NEST API is brutal and not exactly the grace period users of connected devices/software will appreciate or in many a cases with tech designed for non-technical people - know nothing until suddenly in August find what was working yesterday is now not working. Be interesting to get the perspective of the Assistant API for NEST interaction over the current NEST API. Any functionality that is now no-longer an option and show-stopper? Any improvements? Still, they could of done what they did with Map's and monerterised the API. Not that there is nothing stopping them doing that with the Assistant API. Which with some businesses has become the norm. Maybe API's need some sort of Long Term Support flavours, least be much fairer for any transitions taken down the line.
- cwyers 7y ago
  I am pretty sure that the main use case of Works With Nest is to tell the thermostat to go up and down. I don't believe you can do that with Works With Google Assistant.
- Klathmon 7y ago
  I've posted here a few times, but from what I can see at this point, these things (which I use on a daily basis and are the major reasons why I went with Nest): * Can't get Nest camera or Nest doorbell video or images programmatically (without asking a google home device directly). This was the main reason why I sold my Ring and bought a Nest, since Ring didn't allow real time video streaming) * Can't programmatically set or get the nest thermostat temperature, humidity, or home/away status (again, without asking a google assistant device directly). * I can't get notifications of status changes any more. No more API access to things like notifications when someone rings the doorbell, or a camera sees a person. * I don't know for sure, but from what I can see this kills any and all Alexa integration. * And similarly, unless samsung has been blessed by google specifically, SmartThings integrations will go away. There aren't any real improvements since the Nest products were already available from the google assistant system. And while you can argue many of the new-ish features (like being able to ask the google assistant screen devices to see the camera or get notifications on google home devices for doorbell rings) are improvements since they didn't really use the previous "works with nest" APIs, it's basically trading the ability for anyone to use those APIs, to only google being able to use them and give those abilities out to specific players they allow.
otakucode 7y ago
I'm waiting for the day when Google decides to raise/lower the temperature of millions of homes by 1 degree to brag about how much energy they've saved.
throwaway55554 7y ago
But isn't this the risk you take when you build on anyone else's platform?

dotBen 7y ago

Yup, they just did a Twitter. I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large ecosystem where there isn't an alignment of clear economic interest. Google of all people doing this just made it tougher for everyone else to maintain confidence in large vendor platforms.

itsaidpens 7y ago
No one should have expected Google to maintain focus on anything.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Microsoft: embrace extend extinguish Google: Hold my Kombucha!
Gibbon1 7y ago
> Yup, they just did a Twitter. You misspelled Sauron. One app to rule them all, One app to find them, One app to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
zmmmmm 7y ago
Well, the good news is that Google is kind of outing itself as a true outlier in that space. They clearly do not care at all about hurting developers that build on their platforms and there is enough daylight between them and other large tech companies on this that you probably don't need to extrapolate from Google to the entire tech world. Makes me sad to say it as someone who has often defended Google in the past, but I can't on this.
_jal 7y ago
If you build on someone else's platform, the best case is you get to be a sharecropper and can make money as long as you don't make so much that your platform-betters get jealous. The more typical case is this, where you get to spend your time and money doing real-world R&D and discovery of what works for them, for free. If you're going to dance with a vampire, don't be surprised when it bites you.
- pm90 7y ago
  > If you build on someone else's platform, But isn't that the height of specialization? What does a platform mean anyways if its only used for one thing and not by others? It it somewhat unfortunate that things like this make it abundantly clear that such a reality is not possible.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Platform is nothing but a sales&marketing word. It means whatever the owner wants it to.
    - mcny 7y ago
      Google positions angular as a platform.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    It is possible. We just have to prioritize open standards much more than we have been doing in the last decade. History really repeats itself in this regard. First we get ourselves in a tight situation with lots of closed platforms, which is bad for everyone. Then someone comes along, spouting a new philosophy of openness (Stallman comes to mind). The philosophy takes hold and open technology flourishes for a while. But then a huge corporation appears, offering to contribute to this new abundant ecosystem with great new things. By now, people are too relaxed and optimistic, so they readily accept this. Yet, little by little, the corporation exploits this, seizing more and more control, until we get right back where we started.
- krisgenre 7y ago
cortesoft 7y ago
I would worry about ANY company that is completely reliant on any other one company. You should never get in that situation.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Here's a note, straight from quotes file, I took around the original Twitter fiasco, and have since reposted or mentioned on HN a few times on occasions similar to this: * Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." Strangely, it seems to describe recent (2012/2013) situation with API of Twitter perfectly. -- Twitter did that twice[0] already, but it's a lesson people have to learn and relearn repeatedly: this is what happens when you build a business entirely around someone else's platform. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530
- zimablue 7y ago
  [Spoiler alert, Hyperion series] That sounds totally lifted from the Hyperion series, but maybe the idea is earlier than that, does anyone have a proposed source for that idea that's earlier than 1989?
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    The writers were big Sci-Fi fans. The Asari were heavily influenced by the Minbari of Babylon 5. There are lots of other callouts to classic Sci-Fi in the series.
    - j03m1 7y ago
      That ending tho. Unforgivable.
      - XaoDaoCaoCao 7y ago
        I will always be mad about the ME3 ending. If reincarnation is something that happens, my reincarnated self will be mad about the ME3 ending from birth. What a godamn waste.
jfoster 7y ago
It's worse than Twitter. Twitter made a strategic decision (correct or not) that applied across their entire business. Google are making this decision and calculating or hoping that it's in isolation from the rest of their business. That really doesn't seem to be the case. For the rest of their business' life, Google APIs will be met with skepticism about their long-term prospects. That sucks, because it doesn't seem good for anyone. Not good for Google. Not good for their customers. Not good for 3rd party developers.
- Balgair 7y ago
  Per many comments left on HN, the people that this does benefit are the PMs. It seems that a well-worn path to promotion at google is to launch products. Hence, the reason we have umpteen chat apps. Once the promotion occurs, it seems, the product is all but forgotten, having served it's purpose: a raise. The divocring of incentives at google are at fault. The PMs aren't incentivied to do what is best for google, as it conflict with what is best for the PMs' families, college funds, mortgages, and health care. Hence, they do what is best for them at the expense of google.
- telchar 7y ago
  I've already held that opinion of Google products for some time after seeing what a ghost town Sites and Docs are, and the shutdowns of Reader, G+, Wave, etc. At best it seems that you can count on a product silently losing support for years as a hint that you should migrate.
oldjokes 7y ago
Google and Amazon are ruthlessly strangling tech startups and smaller mom & pop shops that latch on to something and see a big spike in sales. They have all the data on these companies already, and people are just waiting to jump in and takeover or destroy a company completely regardless of industry or location. They just borg cube consume any success and very few people make any money in this process. This is happening every day, multiple times per day. That's a way bigger problem than relying on an API or building some app in garden.
- shostack 7y ago
  Do you have sources to cite on this?
  - busymom0 7y ago
    Reminds me of this: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

netsec_burn 7y ago

Isn't this anti-competitive with Amazon?

joshmccormack 7y ago

“I’m a Works with Nest developer.” Not anymore you’re not.

reustle 7y ago
Sounds like the perfect time to transition to a "`Works with Nest` to `Works with Google Assistant` Conversion Consultant"

telltruth 7y ago

At Google, no one wants to work on existing things. You must create new product/feature to get promoted. Then you move on and thing gets shutdown. This is direct consequences of their internal incentive structure.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost. PowerShell still relies on conhost. Do you mean PowerShell ISE instead of plain PowerShell or do you mean cmd.exe instead of conhost?
  - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
    You're right, cmd.exe not conhost.
- nikbackm 7y ago
  It's not really possible to substantially improve either conhost or cmd due to backwards compatibility considerations. The risk of breaking something for someone is just too high.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    And some people dont realize the amount of work Microsoft puts into backwards compatibility. Just look at articles describing the leaked Windows source they describe Microsoft putting in code to path third party Windows software to make sure it still works. This is also why Wine struggles from version / config to version / config. They cant account for every edge case the way Microsoft does / has. Microsoft by comparison has unlimited resources while Wine is just volunteers who can only test so much software.

kristianc 7y ago

> Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight. Has it really, or does it simply mean that access is going to be through Google’s API going forward? It doesn’t seem super clear, but I can see why Google wouldn’t want to maintain two separate APIs.

Klathmon 7y ago
From what I can see so far, there isn't any way to replicate 90% of the functionality through the assistant APIs, and even their FAQ and messaging seems to be reinforcing that they won't be adding it. For example, you can't grab images from a camera through the assistant API, you can't get notification of a doorbell ring, you can't get notified when one of the devices detects a person.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  The owner of the device is definitely told all the data about the camera, facial recog and all. You, who paid money and installed a device, aren't the owner. Google is. You are a used. You aren't even qualified as a user.

gerbilly 7y ago

Reminds me of this article by Courtney Love comparing the music industry to sharecropping: https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

TheTruth1234 7y ago

What a joke ... f@ck Google. Seriously. I'm not even a Nest developer, but everything Google touches now turns to sh!t.

Zenst 7y ago

Reading thru it, it is not as brutal as it sounds, more that the they merged it into the Google Assistant API, removing direct access permission to the NEST device (remember microphone-gate with NEST) and consolidating those permissions into Assistant. Whilst they are killing it off, they have a transition. However, as far as timelines go - August 2019 kill off date for the NEST API is brutal and not exactly the grace period users of connected devices/software will appreciate or in many a cases with tech designed for non-technical people - know nothing until suddenly in August find what was working yesterday is now not working. Be interesting to get the perspective of the Assistant API for NEST interaction over the current NEST API. Any functionality that is now no-longer an option and show-stopper? Any improvements? Still, they could of done what they did with Map's and monerterised the API. Not that there is nothing stopping them doing that with the Assistant API. Which with some businesses has become the norm. Maybe API's need some sort of Long Term Support flavours, least be much fairer for any transitions taken down the line.

cwyers 7y ago
I am pretty sure that the main use case of Works With Nest is to tell the thermostat to go up and down. I don't believe you can do that with Works With Google Assistant.
Klathmon 7y ago
I've posted here a few times, but from what I can see at this point, these things (which I use on a daily basis and are the major reasons why I went with Nest): * Can't get Nest camera or Nest doorbell video or images programmatically (without asking a google home device directly). This was the main reason why I sold my Ring and bought a Nest, since Ring didn't allow real time video streaming) * Can't programmatically set or get the nest thermostat temperature, humidity, or home/away status (again, without asking a google assistant device directly). * I can't get notifications of status changes any more. No more API access to things like notifications when someone rings the doorbell, or a camera sees a person. * I don't know for sure, but from what I can see this kills any and all Alexa integration. * And similarly, unless samsung has been blessed by google specifically, SmartThings integrations will go away. There aren't any real improvements since the Nest products were already available from the google assistant system. And while you can argue many of the new-ish features (like being able to ask the google assistant screen devices to see the camera or get notifications on google home devices for doorbell rings) are improvements since they didn't really use the previous "works with nest" APIs, it's basically trading the ability for anyone to use those APIs, to only google being able to use them and give those abilities out to specific players they allow.

otakucode 7y ago

I'm waiting for the day when Google decides to raise/lower the temperature of millions of homes by 1 degree to brag about how much energy they've saved.

throwaway55554 7y ago

But isn't this the risk you take when you build on anyone else's platform?