21 ms·

Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

351 points by redm 7y ago

romanovcode 7y ago
What would you expect to happen. This was written the moment G bought it. Of course they are going to merge the platform into Google-Home. This was inevitable
- eej71 7y ago
  I had this hope that the nest brand itself would survive and be as it was - with perhaps some products migrated into that brand. But that was misplaced hope.
  - romanovcode 7y ago
    It never works like this
- nacs 7y ago
  Merging can be done without killing the existing API. I don't care if they stick "Google Home Assistant Plus+" in front of it as long as the API allows for interfacing with the hardware I purchased. Instead, Google decided to go the full-Google kill-everything route.
  - asdkhadsj 7y ago
    Can be done, yes - but seemingly not by Google. A purchase by Google seems to be a pretty likely death sentence for a product. Makes me happy I migrated away from them years ago.
daxterspeed 7y ago
This article was a surprisingly difficult read. It felt like every other word was a brand name, and the underlying confusing naming scheme surely didn't help. On top of that the author flip-flops between the issues of Nest going away (loss of privacy, and product ecosystem) while excited about Nest functionality moving to Google Home (Google Nest?). I think the main takeaway for me is that it'll probably be another decade until there's any stability to be found in the "smart home" ecosystem.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > It felt like every other word was a brand name God, yes, that's been annoying me a lot recently. Was a bird fined? No, Bird was fined. Do you want a smart home? Buy Smart Home! I find it much easier to read when brands and products aren't just random nouns.
  - asdff 7y ago
    It makes it tricky to even search for terms. I was trying to google something about Pocket a while back and man I nearly threw my computer at the wall trying to dig for a relevant result. I think a lot of companies unintentionally shoot themselves in the foot pulling their single word product name out of the dictionary.
- justin66 7y ago
  Of course, a decade is optimistic. You could have felt the same way and written the same thing a decade ago. It's possible that there will never be any stability in the smart home ecosystem, and constantly buying and throwing away electronic junk is simply the norm.
  - 2Ccltvcm 7y ago
    Stability in the ecosystem means loss of revenue stream. Disorder must be preserved to generate revenue reliably.
throwayEngineer 7y ago
Someone at HN hate Google? I don't see topics angry about Amazon, Apple or Facebook and privacy. All are using your data to sell you stuff. Why does Google get hate, but other tech companies get a free pass?
- skilled 7y ago
  Here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ If you'd like to search through comments make sure to swap out the default Stories selection.
stirkac 7y ago
This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.
- erinnh 7y ago
  I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.
  - benbristow 7y ago
    Not really an 'internet' of things then is it? More like 'WLoT' (Wireless LAN of things)
    - sly010 7y ago
      Well, IoT never was a customer term, it was an industry term. And just because something keeps working without the internet doesn't mean it cannot benefit from connectivity.
    - brobdingnagians 7y ago
      Most things in your home don't need to know that much about things outside your home, or could have a well-defined standard API for getting that information from any source. If you could write wrapper scripts for obtaining weather information or traffic information, for instance, then you could have a self-contained system that required no monthly fees unless you opted to pay for high quality information, etc. but still gained all of the benefits of outside information, is high security, and would probably end up working even better. You could have default information endpoints for ease of setup, but why not make it all customizable? A good company with customer needs in view would be fully capable of making such a system.
    - TheLoneTechNerd 7y ago
      Honestly? That would be awesome. I already have security cameras set up like that (although not wireless) - just home devices that do things for me and report back to a central server in my home. That server can connect to the internet (when I want it to), grab new firmware for the cameras, then disconnect and send out the firmware. That's pretty much all I want from home automation as well. I see the value in being able to say "Alexa, turn down the lights" and having AWS do the voice recognition - but given that I can't trust services to stay more than a few years, I'm not going to invest in it.
heavymark 7y ago
This is why we invested in Apple Home, since that is the least likely to go away completely off all the options. Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go so while they offer amazing features at the cost of invading your privacy, there is no guarantee they will there in the long term.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  >> Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go I felt Gmail was at _significant_ risk when Inbox was announced; result was unexpected.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Inbox by Google was never a separate service it was an alternative front-end UI, so I don't see how it would indicate a risk to Gmail the service (which has had many UI changes over the years, including a clumsy and incomplete incorporation of Inbox features.)
    - NikolaNovak 7y ago
      I guess we had different perception - it happens :). Understanding that underlying infra, when you go deep enough, may have been shared between Gmail & Inbox, same is much the case for all email services anywhere; it IS the front-end UI, and featured enabled by it, that by and large makes an email product. Marketing at the time seemed to indicate and place Inbox as a separate product, and more than one note from Google hinted that it would replace Gmail. In hindsight it obviously didn't happen, but many of us thought it presented a significant risk to Gmail; just as recently people were looking for "Inbox alternatives" due to its demise, at the time we were searching for "Gmail alternatives" due to potential replacement by Inbox (which I think was a brilliant idea and potentially implementation - but I'm too much of a control freak to utilize:).
- nutjob2 7y ago
  Yeah, Apple has never cancelled a product.
Vaslo 7y ago
Has anyone tried Home Assistant to get around things like this? Or are you locked in proprietary technology anyways?
- Klathmon 7y ago
  The APIs that Home Assistant uses (and can possibly use in the future) are the exact ones they are shutting down here.
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  Home Assistant can interface with many different services. I use it with Z-Wave and the (undocumented) cloud API for my A/C, as well as pulling some data from weather services etc. There are a lot of different Z-Wave devices for controlling lights, motors, heat, as well as sensors for motion, smoke, luminosity etc. Zigbee is another standard which can also be used with Home Assistant, which is mostly for lighting AFAIK. The way Home Assistant is written it's relatively easy to write a new service which exposes devices that can control or sense. Sensor readings and control is unified, so you can mix multiple platforms in your automation. You could have a Z-Wave motion sensor trigger a Philips Hue (Zigbee) light if the weather service (HTTP) tells you it's past sunset. You can check out the supported components here: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/
- dusing 7y ago
  HASS won't get you around this shutdown, but it is a great solution to avoid these kinds of things. local server, local communication is a requirement for all the devices I put in my smart home. HASS does not tie you down to any manufacturer, just make sure the devices you add have local control.
deforciant 7y ago
I did quite a bit of experimentation with home automation systems (HomeSeer, Home Assistant, Domoticz and so on) and decided that the best (at least for me) and the most control giving solution is NodeRED - https://github.com/node-red/node-red https://github.com/node-red/node-red. You can create pretty complex flows with many already available nodes but if you want something custom - it's trivial either to add JS functions or to create your own node from scratch. Currently running it in a Docker container on an Intel NUC :) The only downside is that it's not user friendly for non-tech people as you would still have to know few things such as what is HTTP server and how do devices talk to each other. It's not as easy as plugging in Google Home and just talking to it. But on the other hand, I only use my google home to: 1. Set timer when I am cooking 2. Send webhooks to my NodeRED to control things. I don't have Nest currently, although I did use it several years ago, can't say it's very smart :)
- t00 7y ago
  Which home automation platform you eventually ended up with on NUC? I recently bought NUC to do the same and I cannot decide between Home Assistant, openHAB so I am running them both and playing a bit with Hue lights/Belkin switch. I have not tried Domoticz - I know it's very lightweight but not too feature heavy. Eventually I want to replace Alexa, using Snips.
  - deforciant 7y ago
    I have both NodeRED and Home Assistant but lately Home Assistant doesn't do pretty much anything anymore and everything goes through NodeRED :) I also run more things on my NUC like drone.io build server to run my tests and few more things. I ended up just having a docker-compose file for all my things as opposed to installing services I use through things like HomeAssistant.
- MrGilbert 7y ago
  Another option: Use HomeAssistant for the user friendly interface (fancy buttons, value display, you-name-it), and use NodeRED for the logic. The HomeAssistant nodes are quite decent, it‘s how I‘ve set things up at home.
Kique 7y ago
I kind of like how Google is moving all the home related products to the Nest brand. We always talk about Google branding being the worst but I think this is actually a logical move to one brand for everything Home. I also like that I'll be able to use my google login for my Nest products in the future, and the author even agrees that the Nest app is not great and the Google Home app is what I currently use anyway for my Nest products. I feel like the only real downside of all this is the Works With Nest platform is dead? Looks like they're working with Amazon on Alexa integration so that is nice, hopefully that will be ready by the end of August and work with more companies about integration.
- Andrex 7y ago
  Yes, I agree. The brand consolidation is long overdue, as are any meaningful updates and fixes to the Nest app. Those are two definite positives of this move. Moving to Google Accounts is more murky: I can definitely see and sympathize with arguments on the basis of Google's overall business model and how it seems off for an ad company to be creating products for the home. With that said, Nest accounts (like the app) are woeful and only support the weakest of 2FA methods. (And in fact, I had that break for me on their desktop site -- enter the 2FA, then infinite loading.) And the definite downside everyone seems to agree on is that killing Works with Nest (especially on a, IMO, short timeframe) shatters the trust placed in that ecosystem. Clickbait comments are focusing on the short-term which is going to be messy and involve a lot of people ditching Nest, but (whether I agree with it or not) I don't see APIs which give direct device access like Works with Nest even being a thing in the future. In a world where the WSJ is sounding the alarm at people adding benign add-ons to Gmail by their own hand, not to mention people blaming Nest for their own weak passwords, it may be that even basic security principles need to be re-examined and in a way "dumbed down." An example of this dumbing down is removing the ability to turn the recording light off moving forward.[1] "Dumbing down" is a negative term, but I'm trying to apply it as neutrally as possible. It makes sense to Google to remove that ability, since any blowback would fall on them. I'm honestly surprised we haven't yet seen the headline "Google's Nest Cam recorded me even though it looked turned off," when the real story there would be an ex-SO or roommate opted to turn the light off and start recording. 1. https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-googles-security-cameras-to-drop-key-customization-option https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-googles-security-ca...
scarface74 7y ago
In what world could Nest have been a profitable ongoing concern without being acquired by someone? It’s hard enough going from startup to either IPO or a self sustainable “lifestyle business” for a software company. It’s almost impossible for a hardware company - see Eero.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  I think they had a shot. It seems to me that they had managed to effectively own the top end segment of the home thermostat market in term of branding and product recognition. I don't see why that wouldn't have enabled a profitable, sustainable company. The thing is that these days people start this kind of company with their exit in mind from day one.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How sustainable? There are only three ways to sell a thermostat. - at the time a home is being built when it’s easy to get all sorts of add ons bundle through the builder. How many homes are being built in a year? - as a self service after market upgrade to your existing thermostat. In the grand scheme of things, how many people are willing to do that? -working with service companies or building out a network of installers. Also, how often do you replace your thermostat? Look at Roku, they knew from day one that money wasn’t ultimately going to come from hardware sells. Their business model was always ultimately to get a cut of subscriptions, sell ads, and sell viewing habits.
    - eloisant 7y ago
      It probably depends on the countries but your thermostat is usually tied to your HVAC system, i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC, so it's more often than when homes are built. So the best way to get volume is probably to partner with a HVAC maker.
      - danans 7y ago
        > i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC This isn't a technical requirement (in the US at least). Thermostat HVAC connections follow a simple wiring/control scheme, which is why smart thermostats can be retrofit at all. That said, replacing an inefficient and poorly balanced HVAC system with a newer well designed one, and insulating a house to modern standards will save far more on operating costs than a smart thermostat, but it is orders of magnitude more expensive in upfront costs.
H1Supreme 7y ago
This is still the Thread protocol under the hood, right? Are developers prevented from creating another platform based on thread (or openthread) somehow? Seems like an opportunity to target people who don't want to move to Google. But, in reality, your average person won't really care. They'll just migrate over and not think twice.
omgtehlion 7y ago
(as recently discussed on HN) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854381
bpyne 7y ago
I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I'm trying to understand what other people see in it. I have to wonder if it's driven by the amount of interest a person has in "tinkering" with technology.
- davemp 7y ago
  Home automation is a great source of overly ambitious capstone ideas for ECE students!
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    Yep. I did one for my BsCpE a dozen years ago.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  the beginnings of a killer app for me can be seen in all those keep plants from dying apps, but they are still too unwieldy for me to consider them as something I'd actually want.
- kirkbackus 7y ago
  I've got a few smart switches that adjust the lights at a specific time in the evening. It really helps my children transition into the evening routine. It also helps me not lose track of time so I can keep that evening routine.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  > I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems that communicate with someone else's servers. But, having lights and temp auto controlled would be nice. But getting a system up and running that only runs on MY server is a little more tinkery than I have time for what with all the LeetCode I have to do to switch jobs.
  - knicholes 7y ago
GiorgioG 7y ago
Thanks Google, I'm moving away from your services and software development stacks (bye Angular.) The only way Google will change their ways is by losing eyeballs, one set at a time.
wheelerwj 7y ago
You can't make this up. Google pushing for privacy and control in one breath, and the very next are merging Nest personal accounts and data into their massive architecture. Really walking the walk google, great work! /s
joshstrange 7y ago
I got a Nest as a housewarming gift and was excited to set it up and play with it. I set it up in SmartThings, HomeBridge, IFTTT, and Alexa. That was about 2 weeks ago, now I'm considering returning it and going to with some zigbee/z-wave alternative. This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. Tuya devices are sometimes acceptable but normally only if someone has already cracked how to talk to them. My new Eufy RoboVac is in that category for me. I'm going to have to write the majority of the HomeBridge support for it but I know it's possible (and I LOVE Anker products).
- mikestew 7y ago
  This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. It is my understanding that HomeKit devices have to allow direct communication to HomeKit, meaning that $CHEAP_ASS_IOT servers can be taken down, but it will still work with HomeKit. (I did make an attempt to find a link to support this, but a few minutes didn't yield anything for/against.)
  - dusing 7y ago
    You'd still be relying on Apple for your UI. Which isn't bad but could be limiting. Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Hell also add alexa and google while you are at it. You wouldn't be tied to anything.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Which I do have, but Home Assistant often relies on APIs that HomeKit doesn't. For instance, EcoBee thermostat: HA needs your creds to go through the EcoBee API that could be turned off in the future. HomeKit doesn't care, it talks directly to the thermostat. Now, get Home Assistant to speak HomeKitese and we have the best of both. In summary, I'm much less concerned about Apple turning off HomeKit than I am about EcoBee getting bought, or otherwise deciding they don't want to support an API anymore.
zelly 7y ago
We are all used to SaaS randomly getting obsoleted, but when you buy a physical device you kind of expect to own it forever. But no, cloud and IoT means even your physical stuff are SaaS products. Just stop buying the trash.
- ansible 7y ago
  You might enjoy Cory Doctorow's recent book "Radicalized": https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ The protagonist starts out by jail-breaking her toaster, which was designed on only toast authorized bread. However, the company that produced it went out of business (taken over by a hedge fund), and the authentication servers were shut down, so now the toaster couldn't toast anything.
  - simonebrunozzi 7y ago
    That's hilarious, if not sad.
    - ansible 7y ago
      Hilarious and sad describe much of Doctorow's work. Though I'd characterize "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" as superbly creepy.
- sixdimensional 7y ago
  Ah, the “digital transformation”, where hardware becomes a service, and you lose control of it, and corporations extract an income stream from you ad infinitum. While great advances come from availability of technology at a reduced up-front price, at what cost to the basic principles and advantages of ownership, privacy, cost depreciation, long term use of assets, etc. has our new world come? This is a good reminder that “all magic, comes with a price”!
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    Microsoft used to run Zune ads to the effect that it "cost $30,000" to fill an iPod, while you could get everything you wanted on a Zune for just $15 a month! As many people pointed out, what this actually meant was that a permanent music collection for a Zune cost infinity dollars. Admittedly, at $15/month you could get 166 years of subscription for that $30k. Unless, of course, Microsoft shuttered the program - which they did within a decade. Meanwhile, my decade-old iPod nano still works fine and is still a pretty good music player to take on runs. And really, that was the best case. Microsoft supported their legacy setup long after they stopped selling it, then finally offered refunds and support for importing playlists to Spotify. Newer, post-transformation services have dropped all pretense of guarantees or ownership; the Kindle Store revokes access to titles or whole collections so casually that the words "your library" are essentially a bad joke. Even news has gone the same way. I had a very bad moment the first time I went to link someone to an article and found that the body had been completely rewritten with no editor's note (and not for correctness). News companies aren't profiting on the transition like music sellers did, but basic concepts like newspaper archives and the "paper of record" are thrown into doubt by the loss of ownership and content stability. The story about farmers hacking back ownership of their tractors is surprising only because it's a bit ahead of the curve on hardware. We're still in the early days of this hardware-as-a-service transition, and it's going produce much uglier surprises than the ones we got with software.
narven 7y ago
Why was the company expected to survive being bought by another company? only in dreams.
hugi 7y ago
This is why I'm not buying a Google Home. You never know when Google might kill it, so it's basically lost money.
mabbo 7y ago
It used to be "Embrace, extend, extinguish"- Microsoft would promote a technology, then extend in their own way, then use that extension to kill off the competitors also using the same tech. Now it's more like "Acquire, Advocate, Assassinate". Big companies buy small tech startups doing neat things for customers. They fund it, highly promote it, integrate it with their stack. Then they kill off the critical pieces that made the original company loved by their users. They buy the devs, the tech, and the customers but kill the soul of whatever it was they acquired.
samsolomon 7y ago
Curious, does anyone have a good manual thermostat that they like? Part of the reason Nest has done so well is most programmable thermostats are horrible to use. I'm a product designer and I don't understand how the scheduling works. Scheduling isn't something I really need for my studio. At night I turn the AC on, in the morning I turn it off. Don't really need to turn on the heat in the winter. I'd love is a quality manual thermostat—something like the Honeywell CT87K1004, but with a metal shell. https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-progammable-thermostat-ct87k1004.htm https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-...
- wil421 7y ago
  Get a cheap Ecobee lite or one of the many long established manufacturers like Honeywell. I really like Nest but after the Google acquisition I’m not confident in their products being supported. For me I don’t need smart scheduling. My wife works from home and I do a couple days a week. The Ecobee 4’s I have are great and come with a couple room sensors. Had them for a few weeks now. I’ve briefly looked into the API and it looks like I could integrate it with my Raspberry Pi.
  - fpgaminer 7y ago
    I have a Honeywell programmable/smart thermostat and am not particularly happy with it. The interface is confusing, and the smart functionality is limited and clunky.
- emddudley 7y ago
  I've been happy with my Carrier Cor thermostat. It's certainly not beautiful, but it is simple and functional. You can program min/max temperatures and start/end times for 4 parts of the day (morning, day, evening, and night). You can temporarily override the schedule, and you can set vacation temperatures. https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/thermostats/wifi-thermostats/cor-wi-fi-thermostat-tp-wem01-a/ https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/thermosta...
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  I believe older 87s had the metal shell. I know mine does, and it also has a vial of mercury inside. Wouldn't be suprised if it's older than I am, but it works perfectly though and I have no desire to change it. My downstairs thermostat is a digital programmable one (also honeywell). I've only lived in this place for a year, but it seemed to work fine and simply enough for programming schedules and temperatures. I only use either for heating, we don't use AC in the summer. I've seen digital ones fail over time, and this one will too. It's always a matter of "when", not "if"; but, if the cost is low enough, that may not be a big deal (assuming it doesn't cause a fire on the way out).
sara7262 7y ago
Who is Satan and why there is evil Best video about this with proofs https://youtu.be/AWNM1-xYI5E https://youtu.be/AWNM1-xYI5E Funny monkey using phone in video Don't think just you can use phone See how he is searching and watching own monkey videos on phone http://bit.ly/2DS4p2R http://bit.ly/2DS4p2R See what happened when a lion was trying to kill man http://bit.ly/2H2zsKc http://bit.ly/2H2zsKc ..
rch 7y ago
> Google's smart home strategy will now revolve around only the "Works with Google Assistant" program This arguably makes more sense anyway, and I think it opens up some interesting possibilities that might not have been possible while Nest was a standalone entity.
- hunter2_ 7y ago
  Works With Nest means arbitrary third parties having API access to a Nest device. Any person could make a dev account and start logging data, sending commands, etc. Works With Google Assistant means Google (and in this case, only Google, given the WwN sunset) having API access to whatever device, in this case a Nest device. Correct me if I'm wrong.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rch 7y ago
    I'm expecting that the extra context available in the Assistant platform will yield integrations that are generally more useful, even if there are fewer of them. As for tinkering... it's not that difficult to build a smart thermostat these days.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
calimac 7y ago
Nobody trusts google. Remember their street view cars that vacuumed data out of unsecured home wifi networks about 10 years ago. https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
dustinmoris 7y ago
Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million mansion and when he wanted to show the camera team his 100k home cinema room they couldn't see anything because his smart lighting system was stuck in an update loop and nobody had a clue how to fix it. In the interview he said it's not a big deal because he doesn't like to have the lights on when watching a movie anyway. L.O.L. If I had a 100k cinema room then it would be certainly be a big deal to me if I can't even see where the heck I'm walking. In my entire life I never thought "damn, how nice would it be if I could turn on the lights in my bedroom from downstairs on my phone". It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems. By the time I find my phone lying around in my lounge, unlock it through Face ID or finger touch, open up the home app, find the home device which I want to control, then make whatever change I wanted to do I am much faster to just get my arse up from the couch, walk over and turn it on/off with a normal hand movement. On the way I can also grab a beer from the fridge and then continue watching the telly and laugh about some fools who spent 100k on a home cinema without lights.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  I agree with this mostly, but I do vaguely pay attention to the space in case there is some smart home application that does end up proving truly useful. I haven't seen anything yet that is compelling to me but it could happen!
  - asark 7y ago
    Useful home automation mostly involves robots of one kind or another. Stuff you might pay a person to do because it's so time consuming and tedious. Cleaning, washing & putting away clothes, lawn care, maybe cooking. Basically anything rich people tend not to do themselves, brought within the reach of the working class by robots. The problem is all the solutions so far kinda suck, and most are still expensive. If they weren't, absent regulation killing the spyvertising industry (oh please oh please oh please), guaranteed to be spyware wholly dependent on sending everything you or they do to "the cloud", I'd say Asimo-style general purpose home robots can't get here soon enough. Light switches, coffee makers, thermostats? Anyone who cared could already get 95% of the way to as-good-as-IoT with motion sensors and timers on existing, cheaper, out of the box solutions, without all the spying and "I'm sorry I can't reach my server so even though we're on the same local network and I'm more powerful than a late 90s desktop PC I still can't talk to your smartphone because I am a piece of absolute garbage."
beat 7y ago
What I don't understand is... What's in this for Google? Why are they making such a radical, customer-hostile, partner-hostile change in direction? Strategically, this just seems all wrong to me, but there's clearly a Big Picture I'm not seeing.
- dfrage 7y ago
  Unless the service is monstrous like search or GMail, working on maintaining existing product infrastructure is a career dead end in the company, the game is to be part of a project launch. And Google's back end stuff constantly changes, so significant amount of maintenance is needed to keep anything running indefinitely, another reason for all the things they've killed. Maybe the conversion of Nest's infrastructure was internally viewed as more maintenance than new project, so it didn't get much in the way of resources? Google palpably doesn't care about brand damage so that's not a consideration.
adjkant 7y ago
If there's anything to be learned from Nest, I think it would be interesting to se a full open source stack for things like Nest as well as Google Home / Alexa. If the NLP is right, the actual functionality is not hard to replicated means that third party integrations can be easily added/customized. Then you also eliminate the always on problem with everything going through your own servers. What I'm imagining (all open source): - Hardware Speaker/Microphone device (can be multiple developed of course on one standard) - Device OS based on Linux - NLP engine - Easy Plug and Play Server Box - Library / Packages for third party integrations (say Gmail et al, Spotify, Amazon, Weather.com) - An open app store type system where all of these "skills" can actually be used with any device instead of only existing in one ecosystem Does something like this already exist? It would obviously take more technical know how, but I think done right it could really be a big step towards keeping the usefulness of assistants and smart home devices while building in control and security both in lasting time and attacks.
- smashah 7y ago
  Home assistant
  - adjkant 7y ago
    Thank you! It looks like a good start but certainly lacks some of the features and I'd of course expect a more user friendly version will eventually be introduced as it matures. Nice to see people are working on it!
    - smashah 7y ago
      It's quite extensive and great to work with. What features are you looking for that might be missing?
      - adjkant 7y ago
        There's more details in other subthreads but basically the voice control and speaker aspect. i may just end up spending some time trying to build on these to make an end to end solution myself (if I ever find the time that is).
gerbilly 7y ago
This so called smarthome stuff is just a bunch of garbage 'solutions' in search of a problem.
woohoo7676 7y ago
I bought two nest outdoor Cameras on the general recommendation that they were the best all around for the job. I have them hooked up to my home automation system so that they sync away statuses - now this is pretty much kaput. How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? I personally will never buy another Nest (or I guess Google Nest) product since apparently this is how they are treating folks.
- dfrage 7y ago
  > How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? The cost is basically infinite as Google is internally structured, maintenance on anything but a monster service is a career dead end. It would likely be worse for an acquired service like Nest, the experience gained wouldn't transfer over to Google's back end.
jayd16 7y ago
Its an interesting move. Google has the muscle here to innovate on a good local area IoT protocol and get a large amount of devices using it. There's a slight chance it'll be opened up one day but I won't hold my breath.
PeterStuer 7y ago
1989: About one out of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the Stasi. 2018: About one out every 2 Americans now own a 'smart speaker' Both Orwell AND Huxley lacked imagination
- jasonvorhe 7y ago
  This is intellectually dishonest and dismissive to people who actually had to live in a totalitarian surveillance state for decades.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    I respectfully disagree. I think those that have lived in a surveillance state (which needs not be overtly totalitarian), are more keen to pick up on the non-advertised impacts of such technologies.
Zigurd 7y ago
The meta-observation based on comments here is that smart home technology has bad coupling between volume customers and early adopters, who may be opinion leaders. "Broken smart home" describes every smart home ever. If you don't believe that I have some used X10 light switches to sell you. Smart homes are a mug's game, but some smart home devices, like smart speakers, sell well because they do enough straight out of the box and the simplest level of integration with other devices is simple enough. If the EOL of Works With Nest troubles you, you are not the mass market. The mass market is delighted by being able to shout "Hey Google, where's my phone?" and save a few minutes of searching, and is unconcerned if in two years their Google Home Mini stops working.
tvanantwerp 7y ago
I've never felt terribly inconvenienced by manually flipping light switches, pushing buttons on the remote, or fiddling with the thermostat. Voice control of these things introduces many new points of failure and aggravations without delivering an order-of-magnitude improvement to my daily life. I just don't find it worthwhile. The day I can say "Google, fold the laundry" or "Alexa, make me a sandwich" and it actually does it, then I'll happily buy in to a smart home ecosystem. That's an order-of-magnitude improvement! Until then, I'm OK with the analog stuff that lasts for ages and breaks in fairly easy-to-understand-and-fix ways.
Smrchy 7y ago
Good thing i never bought a Nest device. As with most "Google made" devices the lifespan and their commitment to support a product are abysmal. Honestly we need to change the way we think about products - especially household products like those Nest was selling. No way can i save money with it if i pay 300$ and it gets killed after 2 or 3 years. And i'm not even talking about the environmental aspects. The documentary about Dieter Rams makes me long for more designers who understand their responsibility. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ramsfilm https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ramsfilm
borvo 7y ago
The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats and the expensive "high tech" ones that others in the traditional industry have tried to create (bryant, looking at you). BUT when I purchased this, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I think this is a huge problem for the software industry in general: most companies don't last. As a customer you can't place your trust in them as they'll be gone in 5 years.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats In what regard? I've yet to run into a problem with my "crappy" thermostats.
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    Having it turn off when I go to work and turn on when I'm on my home is awesome. I haven't done the math but I imagine that it saves a lot of energy vs running it 24/7, and HVAC is my biggest utility expense. I wouldn't be surprised if it also reduces wear and tear on the AC.
  - borvo 7y ago
    I didn't mean to provoke anyway by saying "crappy" ;-) What I notice is that the nest does a really great job managing the temperature in my house and keeping it comfortable. It just works and it became a default expectation. We had to go back to the old thermostat after an issue with our furnace, after which I started getting a ton of complaints from everybody about too cold/too hot. It's a great example of a technology that works really well.
doingmyting 7y ago
I'll never give up my smart home devices. You'll have to pry them from my cold dead hands (or house). I have smart plugs hooked up to Alexa that'll shut everything off without me lifting a finger. All I do is ask Alexa to do it from anywhere in my house. And if somehow I forget to turn things off they all turn off automatically by 3am. My mom is in her 70s and lives alone. I bought her a connected camera for outside her house and not only can she see who is out there from her phone, but I can see as well. Privacy concerns are a real issue but this isn't a fad that'll simple come and go. It's here to stay!

351 points by redm 7y ago

What would you expect to happen. This was written the moment G bought it. Of course they are going to merge the platform into Google-Home. This was inevitable

eej71 7y ago
I had this hope that the nest brand itself would survive and be as it was - with perhaps some products migrated into that brand. But that was misplaced hope.
- romanovcode 7y ago
  It never works like this
nacs 7y ago
Merging can be done without killing the existing API. I don't care if they stick "Google Home Assistant Plus+" in front of it as long as the API allows for interfacing with the hardware I purchased. Instead, Google decided to go the full-Google kill-everything route.
- asdkhadsj 7y ago
  Can be done, yes - but seemingly not by Google. A purchase by Google seems to be a pretty likely death sentence for a product. Makes me happy I migrated away from them years ago.

daxterspeed 7y ago

This article was a surprisingly difficult read. It felt like every other word was a brand name, and the underlying confusing naming scheme surely didn't help. On top of that the author flip-flops between the issues of Nest going away (loss of privacy, and product ecosystem) while excited about Nest functionality moving to Google Home (Google Nest?). I think the main takeaway for me is that it'll probably be another decade until there's any stability to be found in the "smart home" ecosystem.

luckylion 7y ago
> It felt like every other word was a brand name God, yes, that's been annoying me a lot recently. Was a bird fined? No, Bird was fined. Do you want a smart home? Buy Smart Home! I find it much easier to read when brands and products aren't just random nouns.
- asdff 7y ago
  It makes it tricky to even search for terms. I was trying to google something about Pocket a while back and man I nearly threw my computer at the wall trying to dig for a relevant result. I think a lot of companies unintentionally shoot themselves in the foot pulling their single word product name out of the dictionary.
justin66 7y ago
Of course, a decade is optimistic. You could have felt the same way and written the same thing a decade ago. It's possible that there will never be any stability in the smart home ecosystem, and constantly buying and throwing away electronic junk is simply the norm.
- 2Ccltvcm 7y ago
  Stability in the ecosystem means loss of revenue stream. Disorder must be preserved to generate revenue reliably.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

Someone at HN hate Google? I don't see topics angry about Amazon, Apple or Facebook and privacy. All are using your data to sell you stuff. Why does Google get hate, but other tech companies get a free pass?

skilled 7y ago
Here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ If you'd like to search through comments make sure to swap out the default Stories selection.

stirkac 7y ago

This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.

erinnh 7y ago
I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.
- benbristow 7y ago
  Not really an 'internet' of things then is it? More like 'WLoT' (Wireless LAN of things)
  - sly010 7y ago
    Well, IoT never was a customer term, it was an industry term. And just because something keeps working without the internet doesn't mean it cannot benefit from connectivity.
  - brobdingnagians 7y ago
    Most things in your home don't need to know that much about things outside your home, or could have a well-defined standard API for getting that information from any source. If you could write wrapper scripts for obtaining weather information or traffic information, for instance, then you could have a self-contained system that required no monthly fees unless you opted to pay for high quality information, etc. but still gained all of the benefits of outside information, is high security, and would probably end up working even better. You could have default information endpoints for ease of setup, but why not make it all customizable? A good company with customer needs in view would be fully capable of making such a system.
  - TheLoneTechNerd 7y ago
    Honestly? That would be awesome. I already have security cameras set up like that (although not wireless) - just home devices that do things for me and report back to a central server in my home. That server can connect to the internet (when I want it to), grab new firmware for the cameras, then disconnect and send out the firmware. That's pretty much all I want from home automation as well. I see the value in being able to say "Alexa, turn down the lights" and having AWS do the voice recognition - but given that I can't trust services to stay more than a few years, I'm not going to invest in it.

heavymark 7y ago

This is why we invested in Apple Home, since that is the least likely to go away completely off all the options. Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go so while they offer amazing features at the cost of invading your privacy, there is no guarantee they will there in the long term.

NikolaNovak 7y ago
>> Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go I felt Gmail was at _significant_ risk when Inbox was announced; result was unexpected.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Inbox by Google was never a separate service it was an alternative front-end UI, so I don't see how it would indicate a risk to Gmail the service (which has had many UI changes over the years, including a clumsy and incomplete incorporation of Inbox features.)
  - NikolaNovak 7y ago
    I guess we had different perception - it happens :). Understanding that underlying infra, when you go deep enough, may have been shared between Gmail & Inbox, same is much the case for all email services anywhere; it IS the front-end UI, and featured enabled by it, that by and large makes an email product. Marketing at the time seemed to indicate and place Inbox as a separate product, and more than one note from Google hinted that it would replace Gmail. In hindsight it obviously didn't happen, but many of us thought it presented a significant risk to Gmail; just as recently people were looking for "Inbox alternatives" due to its demise, at the time we were searching for "Gmail alternatives" due to potential replacement by Inbox (which I think was a brilliant idea and potentially implementation - but I'm too much of a control freak to utilize:).
nutjob2 7y ago
Yeah, Apple has never cancelled a product.

Vaslo 7y ago

Has anyone tried Home Assistant to get around things like this? Or are you locked in proprietary technology anyways?

Klathmon 7y ago
The APIs that Home Assistant uses (and can possibly use in the future) are the exact ones they are shutting down here.
magicalhippo 7y ago
Home Assistant can interface with many different services. I use it with Z-Wave and the (undocumented) cloud API for my A/C, as well as pulling some data from weather services etc. There are a lot of different Z-Wave devices for controlling lights, motors, heat, as well as sensors for motion, smoke, luminosity etc. Zigbee is another standard which can also be used with Home Assistant, which is mostly for lighting AFAIK. The way Home Assistant is written it's relatively easy to write a new service which exposes devices that can control or sense. Sensor readings and control is unified, so you can mix multiple platforms in your automation. You could have a Z-Wave motion sensor trigger a Philips Hue (Zigbee) light if the weather service (HTTP) tells you it's past sunset. You can check out the supported components here: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/
dusing 7y ago
HASS won't get you around this shutdown, but it is a great solution to avoid these kinds of things. local server, local communication is a requirement for all the devices I put in my smart home. HASS does not tie you down to any manufacturer, just make sure the devices you add have local control.

deforciant 7y ago

I did quite a bit of experimentation with home automation systems (HomeSeer, Home Assistant, Domoticz and so on) and decided that the best (at least for me) and the most control giving solution is NodeRED - https://github.com/node-red/node-red https://github.com/node-red/node-red. You can create pretty complex flows with many already available nodes but if you want something custom - it's trivial either to add JS functions or to create your own node from scratch. Currently running it in a Docker container on an Intel NUC :) The only downside is that it's not user friendly for non-tech people as you would still have to know few things such as what is HTTP server and how do devices talk to each other. It's not as easy as plugging in Google Home and just talking to it. But on the other hand, I only use my google home to: 1. Set timer when I am cooking 2. Send webhooks to my NodeRED to control things. I don't have Nest currently, although I did use it several years ago, can't say it's very smart :)

t00 7y ago
Which home automation platform you eventually ended up with on NUC? I recently bought NUC to do the same and I cannot decide between Home Assistant, openHAB so I am running them both and playing a bit with Hue lights/Belkin switch. I have not tried Domoticz - I know it's very lightweight but not too feature heavy. Eventually I want to replace Alexa, using Snips.
- deforciant 7y ago
  I have both NodeRED and Home Assistant but lately Home Assistant doesn't do pretty much anything anymore and everything goes through NodeRED :) I also run more things on my NUC like drone.io build server to run my tests and few more things. I ended up just having a docker-compose file for all my things as opposed to installing services I use through things like HomeAssistant.
MrGilbert 7y ago
Another option: Use HomeAssistant for the user friendly interface (fancy buttons, value display, you-name-it), and use NodeRED for the logic. The HomeAssistant nodes are quite decent, it‘s how I‘ve set things up at home.

Kique 7y ago

I kind of like how Google is moving all the home related products to the Nest brand. We always talk about Google branding being the worst but I think this is actually a logical move to one brand for everything Home. I also like that I'll be able to use my google login for my Nest products in the future, and the author even agrees that the Nest app is not great and the Google Home app is what I currently use anyway for my Nest products. I feel like the only real downside of all this is the Works With Nest platform is dead? Looks like they're working with Amazon on Alexa integration so that is nice, hopefully that will be ready by the end of August and work with more companies about integration.

Andrex 7y ago
Yes, I agree. The brand consolidation is long overdue, as are any meaningful updates and fixes to the Nest app. Those are two definite positives of this move. Moving to Google Accounts is more murky: I can definitely see and sympathize with arguments on the basis of Google's overall business model and how it seems off for an ad company to be creating products for the home. With that said, Nest accounts (like the app) are woeful and only support the weakest of 2FA methods. (And in fact, I had that break for me on their desktop site -- enter the 2FA, then infinite loading.) And the definite downside everyone seems to agree on is that killing Works with Nest (especially on a, IMO, short timeframe) shatters the trust placed in that ecosystem. Clickbait comments are focusing on the short-term which is going to be messy and involve a lot of people ditching Nest, but (whether I agree with it or not) I don't see APIs which give direct device access like Works with Nest even being a thing in the future. In a world where the WSJ is sounding the alarm at people adding benign add-ons to Gmail by their own hand, not to mention people blaming Nest for their own weak passwords, it may be that even basic security principles need to be re-examined and in a way "dumbed down." An example of this dumbing down is removing the ability to turn the recording light off moving forward.[1] "Dumbing down" is a negative term, but I'm trying to apply it as neutrally as possible. It makes sense to Google to remove that ability, since any blowback would fall on them. I'm honestly surprised we haven't yet seen the headline "Google's Nest Cam recorded me even though it looked turned off," when the real story there would be an ex-SO or roommate opted to turn the light off and start recording. 1. https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-googles-security-cameras-to-drop-key-customization-option https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-googles-security-ca...

scarface74 7y ago

In what world could Nest have been a profitable ongoing concern without being acquired by someone? It’s hard enough going from startup to either IPO or a self sustainable “lifestyle business” for a software company. It’s almost impossible for a hardware company - see Eero.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
I think they had a shot. It seems to me that they had managed to effectively own the top end segment of the home thermostat market in term of branding and product recognition. I don't see why that wouldn't have enabled a profitable, sustainable company. The thing is that these days people start this kind of company with their exit in mind from day one.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How sustainable? There are only three ways to sell a thermostat. - at the time a home is being built when it’s easy to get all sorts of add ons bundle through the builder. How many homes are being built in a year? - as a self service after market upgrade to your existing thermostat. In the grand scheme of things, how many people are willing to do that? -working with service companies or building out a network of installers. Also, how often do you replace your thermostat? Look at Roku, they knew from day one that money wasn’t ultimately going to come from hardware sells. Their business model was always ultimately to get a cut of subscriptions, sell ads, and sell viewing habits.
  - eloisant 7y ago
    It probably depends on the countries but your thermostat is usually tied to your HVAC system, i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC, so it's more often than when homes are built. So the best way to get volume is probably to partner with a HVAC maker.
    - danans 7y ago
      > i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC This isn't a technical requirement (in the US at least). Thermostat HVAC connections follow a simple wiring/control scheme, which is why smart thermostats can be retrofit at all. That said, replacing an inefficient and poorly balanced HVAC system with a newer well designed one, and insulating a house to modern standards will save far more on operating costs than a smart thermostat, but it is orders of magnitude more expensive in upfront costs.

H1Supreme 7y ago

This is still the Thread protocol under the hood, right? Are developers prevented from creating another platform based on thread (or openthread) somehow? Seems like an opportunity to target people who don't want to move to Google. But, in reality, your average person won't really care. They'll just migrate over and not think twice.

omgtehlion 7y ago

(as recently discussed on HN) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854381

bpyne 7y ago

I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I'm trying to understand what other people see in it. I have to wonder if it's driven by the amount of interest a person has in "tinkering" with technology.

davemp 7y ago
Home automation is a great source of overly ambitious capstone ideas for ECE students!
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  Yep. I did one for my BsCpE a dozen years ago.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
the beginnings of a killer app for me can be seen in all those keep plants from dying apps, but they are still too unwieldy for me to consider them as something I'd actually want.
kirkbackus 7y ago
I've got a few smart switches that adjust the lights at a specific time in the evening. It really helps my children transition into the evening routine. It also helps me not lose track of time so I can keep that evening routine.
throwaway55554 7y ago
> I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems that communicate with someone else's servers. But, having lights and temp auto controlled would be nice. But getting a system up and running that only runs on MY server is a little more tinkery than I have time for what with all the LeetCode I have to do to switch jobs.
- knicholes 7y ago

GiorgioG 7y ago

Thanks Google, I'm moving away from your services and software development stacks (bye Angular.) The only way Google will change their ways is by losing eyeballs, one set at a time.

wheelerwj 7y ago

You can't make this up. Google pushing for privacy and control in one breath, and the very next are merging Nest personal accounts and data into their massive architecture. Really walking the walk google, great work! /s

joshstrange 7y ago

I got a Nest as a housewarming gift and was excited to set it up and play with it. I set it up in SmartThings, HomeBridge, IFTTT, and Alexa. That was about 2 weeks ago, now I'm considering returning it and going to with some zigbee/z-wave alternative. This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. Tuya devices are sometimes acceptable but normally only if someone has already cracked how to talk to them. My new Eufy RoboVac is in that category for me. I'm going to have to write the majority of the HomeBridge support for it but I know it's possible (and I LOVE Anker products).

mikestew 7y ago
This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. It is my understanding that HomeKit devices have to allow direct communication to HomeKit, meaning that $CHEAP_ASS_IOT servers can be taken down, but it will still work with HomeKit. (I did make an attempt to find a link to support this, but a few minutes didn't yield anything for/against.)
- dusing 7y ago
  You'd still be relying on Apple for your UI. Which isn't bad but could be limiting. Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Hell also add alexa and google while you are at it. You wouldn't be tied to anything.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Which I do have, but Home Assistant often relies on APIs that HomeKit doesn't. For instance, EcoBee thermostat: HA needs your creds to go through the EcoBee API that could be turned off in the future. HomeKit doesn't care, it talks directly to the thermostat. Now, get Home Assistant to speak HomeKitese and we have the best of both. In summary, I'm much less concerned about Apple turning off HomeKit than I am about EcoBee getting bought, or otherwise deciding they don't want to support an API anymore.

zelly 7y ago

We are all used to SaaS randomly getting obsoleted, but when you buy a physical device you kind of expect to own it forever. But no, cloud and IoT means even your physical stuff are SaaS products. Just stop buying the trash.

ansible 7y ago
You might enjoy Cory Doctorow's recent book "Radicalized": https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ The protagonist starts out by jail-breaking her toaster, which was designed on only toast authorized bread. However, the company that produced it went out of business (taken over by a hedge fund), and the authentication servers were shut down, so now the toaster couldn't toast anything.
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  That's hilarious, if not sad.
  - ansible 7y ago
    Hilarious and sad describe much of Doctorow's work. Though I'd characterize "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" as superbly creepy.
sixdimensional 7y ago
Ah, the “digital transformation”, where hardware becomes a service, and you lose control of it, and corporations extract an income stream from you ad infinitum. While great advances come from availability of technology at a reduced up-front price, at what cost to the basic principles and advantages of ownership, privacy, cost depreciation, long term use of assets, etc. has our new world come? This is a good reminder that “all magic, comes with a price”!
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  Microsoft used to run Zune ads to the effect that it "cost $30,000" to fill an iPod, while you could get everything you wanted on a Zune for just $15 a month! As many people pointed out, what this actually meant was that a permanent music collection for a Zune cost infinity dollars. Admittedly, at $15/month you could get 166 years of subscription for that $30k. Unless, of course, Microsoft shuttered the program - which they did within a decade. Meanwhile, my decade-old iPod nano still works fine and is still a pretty good music player to take on runs. And really, that was the best case. Microsoft supported their legacy setup long after they stopped selling it, then finally offered refunds and support for importing playlists to Spotify. Newer, post-transformation services have dropped all pretense of guarantees or ownership; the Kindle Store revokes access to titles or whole collections so casually that the words "your library" are essentially a bad joke. Even news has gone the same way. I had a very bad moment the first time I went to link someone to an article and found that the body had been completely rewritten with no editor's note (and not for correctness). News companies aren't profiting on the transition like music sellers did, but basic concepts like newspaper archives and the "paper of record" are thrown into doubt by the loss of ownership and content stability. The story about farmers hacking back ownership of their tractors is surprising only because it's a bit ahead of the curve on hardware. We're still in the early days of this hardware-as-a-service transition, and it's going produce much uglier surprises than the ones we got with software.

narven 7y ago

Why was the company expected to survive being bought by another company? only in dreams.

hugi 7y ago

This is why I'm not buying a Google Home. You never know when Google might kill it, so it's basically lost money.

mabbo 7y ago

It used to be "Embrace, extend, extinguish"- Microsoft would promote a technology, then extend in their own way, then use that extension to kill off the competitors also using the same tech. Now it's more like "Acquire, Advocate, Assassinate". Big companies buy small tech startups doing neat things for customers. They fund it, highly promote it, integrate it with their stack. Then they kill off the critical pieces that made the original company loved by their users. They buy the devs, the tech, and the customers but kill the soul of whatever it was they acquired.

samsolomon 7y ago

Curious, does anyone have a good manual thermostat that they like? Part of the reason Nest has done so well is most programmable thermostats are horrible to use. I'm a product designer and I don't understand how the scheduling works. Scheduling isn't something I really need for my studio. At night I turn the AC on, in the morning I turn it off. Don't really need to turn on the heat in the winter. I'd love is a quality manual thermostat—something like the Honeywell CT87K1004, but with a metal shell. https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-progammable-thermostat-ct87k1004.htm https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-...

wil421 7y ago
Get a cheap Ecobee lite or one of the many long established manufacturers like Honeywell. I really like Nest but after the Google acquisition I’m not confident in their products being supported. For me I don’t need smart scheduling. My wife works from home and I do a couple days a week. The Ecobee 4’s I have are great and come with a couple room sensors. Had them for a few weeks now. I’ve briefly looked into the API and it looks like I could integrate it with my Raspberry Pi.
- fpgaminer 7y ago
  I have a Honeywell programmable/smart thermostat and am not particularly happy with it. The interface is confusing, and the smart functionality is limited and clunky.
emddudley 7y ago
I've been happy with my Carrier Cor thermostat. It's certainly not beautiful, but it is simple and functional. You can program min/max temperatures and start/end times for 4 parts of the day (morning, day, evening, and night). You can temporarily override the schedule, and you can set vacation temperatures. https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/thermostats/wifi-thermostats/cor-wi-fi-thermostat-tp-wem01-a/ https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/thermosta...
ilikehurdles 7y ago
I believe older 87s had the metal shell. I know mine does, and it also has a vial of mercury inside. Wouldn't be suprised if it's older than I am, but it works perfectly though and I have no desire to change it. My downstairs thermostat is a digital programmable one (also honeywell). I've only lived in this place for a year, but it seemed to work fine and simply enough for programming schedules and temperatures. I only use either for heating, we don't use AC in the summer. I've seen digital ones fail over time, and this one will too. It's always a matter of "when", not "if"; but, if the cost is low enough, that may not be a big deal (assuming it doesn't cause a fire on the way out).

sara7262 7y ago

Who is Satan and why there is evil Best video about this with proofs https://youtu.be/AWNM1-xYI5E https://youtu.be/AWNM1-xYI5E Funny monkey using phone in video Don't think just you can use phone See how he is searching and watching own monkey videos on phone http://bit.ly/2DS4p2R http://bit.ly/2DS4p2R See what happened when a lion was trying to kill man http://bit.ly/2H2zsKc http://bit.ly/2H2zsKc ..

rch 7y ago

> Google's smart home strategy will now revolve around only the "Works with Google Assistant" program This arguably makes more sense anyway, and I think it opens up some interesting possibilities that might not have been possible while Nest was a standalone entity.

hunter2_ 7y ago
Works With Nest means arbitrary third parties having API access to a Nest device. Any person could make a dev account and start logging data, sending commands, etc. Works With Google Assistant means Google (and in this case, only Google, given the WwN sunset) having API access to whatever device, in this case a Nest device. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rch 7y ago
  I'm expecting that the extra context available in the Assistant platform will yield integrations that are generally more useful, even if there are fewer of them. As for tinkering... it's not that difficult to build a smart thermostat these days.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

calimac 7y ago

Nobody trusts google. Remember their street view cars that vacuumed data out of unsecured home wifi networks about 10 years ago. https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/

dustinmoris 7y ago

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million mansion and when he wanted to show the camera team his 100k home cinema room they couldn't see anything because his smart lighting system was stuck in an update loop and nobody had a clue how to fix it. In the interview he said it's not a big deal because he doesn't like to have the lights on when watching a movie anyway. L.O.L. If I had a 100k cinema room then it would be certainly be a big deal to me if I can't even see where the heck I'm walking. In my entire life I never thought "damn, how nice would it be if I could turn on the lights in my bedroom from downstairs on my phone". It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems. By the time I find my phone lying around in my lounge, unlock it through Face ID or finger touch, open up the home app, find the home device which I want to control, then make whatever change I wanted to do I am much faster to just get my arse up from the couch, walk over and turn it on/off with a normal hand movement. On the way I can also grab a beer from the fridge and then continue watching the telly and laugh about some fools who spent 100k on a home cinema without lights.

gameswithgo 7y ago
I agree with this mostly, but I do vaguely pay attention to the space in case there is some smart home application that does end up proving truly useful. I haven't seen anything yet that is compelling to me but it could happen!
- asark 7y ago
  Useful home automation mostly involves robots of one kind or another. Stuff you might pay a person to do because it's so time consuming and tedious. Cleaning, washing & putting away clothes, lawn care, maybe cooking. Basically anything rich people tend not to do themselves, brought within the reach of the working class by robots. The problem is all the solutions so far kinda suck, and most are still expensive. If they weren't, absent regulation killing the spyvertising industry (oh please oh please oh please), guaranteed to be spyware wholly dependent on sending everything you or they do to "the cloud", I'd say Asimo-style general purpose home robots can't get here soon enough. Light switches, coffee makers, thermostats? Anyone who cared could already get 95% of the way to as-good-as-IoT with motion sensors and timers on existing, cheaper, out of the box solutions, without all the spying and "I'm sorry I can't reach my server so even though we're on the same local network and I'm more powerful than a late 90s desktop PC I still can't talk to your smartphone because I am a piece of absolute garbage."

beat 7y ago

What I don't understand is... What's in this for Google? Why are they making such a radical, customer-hostile, partner-hostile change in direction? Strategically, this just seems all wrong to me, but there's clearly a Big Picture I'm not seeing.

dfrage 7y ago
Unless the service is monstrous like search or GMail, working on maintaining existing product infrastructure is a career dead end in the company, the game is to be part of a project launch. And Google's back end stuff constantly changes, so significant amount of maintenance is needed to keep anything running indefinitely, another reason for all the things they've killed. Maybe the conversion of Nest's infrastructure was internally viewed as more maintenance than new project, so it didn't get much in the way of resources? Google palpably doesn't care about brand damage so that's not a consideration.

adjkant 7y ago

If there's anything to be learned from Nest, I think it would be interesting to se a full open source stack for things like Nest as well as Google Home / Alexa. If the NLP is right, the actual functionality is not hard to replicated means that third party integrations can be easily added/customized. Then you also eliminate the always on problem with everything going through your own servers. What I'm imagining (all open source): - Hardware Speaker/Microphone device (can be multiple developed of course on one standard) - Device OS based on Linux - NLP engine - Easy Plug and Play Server Box - Library / Packages for third party integrations (say Gmail et al, Spotify, Amazon, Weather.com) - An open app store type system where all of these "skills" can actually be used with any device instead of only existing in one ecosystem Does something like this already exist? It would obviously take more technical know how, but I think done right it could really be a big step towards keeping the usefulness of assistants and smart home devices while building in control and security both in lasting time and attacks.

smashah 7y ago
Home assistant
- adjkant 7y ago
  Thank you! It looks like a good start but certainly lacks some of the features and I'd of course expect a more user friendly version will eventually be introduced as it matures. Nice to see people are working on it!
  - smashah 7y ago
    It's quite extensive and great to work with. What features are you looking for that might be missing?
    - adjkant 7y ago
      There's more details in other subthreads but basically the voice control and speaker aspect. i may just end up spending some time trying to build on these to make an end to end solution myself (if I ever find the time that is).

gerbilly 7y ago

This so called smarthome stuff is just a bunch of garbage 'solutions' in search of a problem.

woohoo7676 7y ago

I bought two nest outdoor Cameras on the general recommendation that they were the best all around for the job. I have them hooked up to my home automation system so that they sync away statuses - now this is pretty much kaput. How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? I personally will never buy another Nest (or I guess Google Nest) product since apparently this is how they are treating folks.

dfrage 7y ago
> How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? The cost is basically infinite as Google is internally structured, maintenance on anything but a monster service is a career dead end. It would likely be worse for an acquired service like Nest, the experience gained wouldn't transfer over to Google's back end.

jayd16 7y ago

Its an interesting move. Google has the muscle here to innovate on a good local area IoT protocol and get a large amount of devices using it. There's a slight chance it'll be opened up one day but I won't hold my breath.

PeterStuer 7y ago

1989: About one out of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the Stasi. 2018: About one out every 2 Americans now own a 'smart speaker' Both Orwell AND Huxley lacked imagination

jasonvorhe 7y ago
This is intellectually dishonest and dismissive to people who actually had to live in a totalitarian surveillance state for decades.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  I respectfully disagree. I think those that have lived in a surveillance state (which needs not be overtly totalitarian), are more keen to pick up on the non-advertised impacts of such technologies.

Zigurd 7y ago

The meta-observation based on comments here is that smart home technology has bad coupling between volume customers and early adopters, who may be opinion leaders. "Broken smart home" describes every smart home ever. If you don't believe that I have some used X10 light switches to sell you. Smart homes are a mug's game, but some smart home devices, like smart speakers, sell well because they do enough straight out of the box and the simplest level of integration with other devices is simple enough. If the EOL of Works With Nest troubles you, you are not the mass market. The mass market is delighted by being able to shout "Hey Google, where's my phone?" and save a few minutes of searching, and is unconcerned if in two years their Google Home Mini stops working.

tvanantwerp 7y ago

I've never felt terribly inconvenienced by manually flipping light switches, pushing buttons on the remote, or fiddling with the thermostat. Voice control of these things introduces many new points of failure and aggravations without delivering an order-of-magnitude improvement to my daily life. I just don't find it worthwhile. The day I can say "Google, fold the laundry" or "Alexa, make me a sandwich" and it actually does it, then I'll happily buy in to a smart home ecosystem. That's an order-of-magnitude improvement! Until then, I'm OK with the analog stuff that lasts for ages and breaks in fairly easy-to-understand-and-fix ways.

Smrchy 7y ago

Good thing i never bought a Nest device. As with most "Google made" devices the lifespan and their commitment to support a product are abysmal. Honestly we need to change the way we think about products - especially household products like those Nest was selling. No way can i save money with it if i pay 300$ and it gets killed after 2 or 3 years. And i'm not even talking about the environmental aspects. The documentary about Dieter Rams makes me long for more designers who understand their responsibility. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ramsfilm https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ramsfilm

borvo 7y ago

The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats and the expensive "high tech" ones that others in the traditional industry have tried to create (bryant, looking at you). BUT when I purchased this, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I think this is a huge problem for the software industry in general: most companies don't last. As a customer you can't place your trust in them as they'll be gone in 5 years.

mieseratte 7y ago
> The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats In what regard? I've yet to run into a problem with my "crappy" thermostats.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  Having it turn off when I go to work and turn on when I'm on my home is awesome. I haven't done the math but I imagine that it saves a lot of energy vs running it 24/7, and HVAC is my biggest utility expense. I wouldn't be surprised if it also reduces wear and tear on the AC.
- borvo 7y ago
  I didn't mean to provoke anyway by saying "crappy" ;-) What I notice is that the nest does a really great job managing the temperature in my house and keeping it comfortable. It just works and it became a default expectation. We had to go back to the old thermostat after an issue with our furnace, after which I started getting a ton of complaints from everybody about too cold/too hot. It's a great example of a technology that works really well.

doingmyting 7y ago

I'll never give up my smart home devices. You'll have to pry them from my cold dead hands (or house). I have smart plugs hooked up to Alexa that'll shut everything off without me lifting a finger. All I do is ask Alexa to do it from anywhere in my house. And if somehow I forget to turn things off they all turn off automatically by 3am. My mom is in her 70s and lives alone. I bought her a connected camera for outside her house and not only can she see who is out there from her phone, but I can see as well. Privacy concerns are a real issue but this isn't a fad that'll simple come and go. It's here to stay!