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I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

498 points by Corrado 3y ago

burntalmonds 3y ago
I recently bought a Nest thermostat and regret it. Two months in and the wifi went bad. Apparently a common problem. Support agrees to send me a replacement, but they end up sending it to the wrong address.
- sshumaker 3y ago
  I had the same issue, but support kept disconnecting me and I had to start all over again going through the entire “try all of the brain dead stuff like resetting” 3 times, before I finally gave up and just ordered a new Nest and ate the cost.
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    Why did you buy the same device after a bad experience? That’s just encouraging the fuckers.
Corrado 3y ago
I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Google AP and it still gets updates and I'm free to change the settings at any time. Another example was my old Nest thermostat. I was so excited to up-my-game and replace the old, crappy thermostat with something that could change the temperature based on the weather forecast. My happiness was short lived; Google purchased Nest and forced everyone to change over to their Google account. Then features stopped working. I finally had to remove the Nest and replace it with something else, mostly because Google just seemed to not care anymore.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  TBF Airport Extremes stopped getting updates years ago. The last update was 7.9.1 from 2019. Granted you can still change settings and not being able to do that after discontinuation is pretty inexcusable.
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    I scored a handful of these years ago, and they still run my house internet. Airport utility still works too. On all devices. They are great little APs.
- knolan 3y ago
  I love my Time Capsule. It worked flawlessly for a nearly a decade when the disk inevitably failed. I still use it in my office for backups with a new disk. I wish Apple still made them and made swapping disks tool free.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I had an AirPort Express as an audio bridge to my stereo for years, maybe a decade? Thing was bullet-proof and the only reason I finally put it down was all the new stereos have built-in casting of some sort. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203874699472 https://www.ebay.com/itm/203874699472 was great, had everything you could want in a compact size, and was compatible with the power adapter cables (which are still the same these days)!
  - katbyte 3y ago
    Is time capsule any different the Time Machine backups to networked eogtage?
    - knolan 3y ago
      No, but the hardware was neat.
- largepeepee 3y ago
nunodonato 3y ago
People just don't seem to learn what google is like...
- bell-cot 3y ago
  The internet is a series of pipes, connected to an infinite supply of useful idiots, who are just waiting to be duped and bilked. /s?
- smt88 3y ago
  I know what Google is like. As a smartphone user, I only have two options if I want my phone and smart home to work in the same ecosystem: Apple and Google. I don't even know how this is possible, but Siri is worse, so I'm stuck with Google.
bitwize 3y ago
While touring the house we eventually bought, my wife spied a Nest on the wall and said, "Oh, that's one thing bitwize is gonna want to rip out." Hooking your home up to the cloud and depending on cloud services for its operation just strikes me as the king of dumb ideas. You've got private, intimate data flowing to who knows where, cloud malfunctions affecting regular home operations (this has already happened at least once with the Nest), and what's discussed here: here-today, gone-tomorrow support with no recourse once the vendor decides to turn support off.
- leipert 3y ago
  Jup. A family member has Nest thermostats. Server went down. The thermostats cranked up to 30C / 86F as the failure mode. Just makes no sense. I get that you don’t want freezing pipes, if the server goes down, but come on.
  - Bluecobra 3y ago
    That sounds a bit far fetched to me, I have had my Internet go down multiple times and never have a Nest problem. In fact I don’t even think an Internet connection is required if you just want it to be a dumb thermostat. The default safety settings on my nest is 45F for heat and 95F for AC. This setting is user adjustable so maybe your family member override it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - leipert 3y ago
      You are probably in the US. In Germany usually each radiator has a thermostat and you usually do not have wall thermostats unless you have floor heating. That being said, I’ve double checked and it is Netatmo [0] and not Nest. The point still stands, that some cloud based home automation devices behave stupid if they cannot talk to the server. [0]: https://www.netatmo.com/en-gb/additional-smart-radiator-valve https://www.netatmo.com/en-gb/additional-smart-radiator-valv...
  - 3y ago
eska 3y ago
https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ I’m sorry but you’re asking for it when you go Google.
ilayn 3y ago
If only the author knew to what level Home Assistant reached, they would not even bother with google or alexa.
- gondaloof 3y ago
  What can HA do that Google/Alexa can’t?
  - c4mpute 3y ago
    Break even faster. Upgrading HA is a chore, it frequently breaks, ceases to understand its own configuration, drops integrations.
    - kweingar 3y ago
      Not sure why this was downvoted. This has been my experience. It’s quite high maintenance.
    - srmarm 3y ago
      I had this experience a few years back and just put it in the sorta janky but hacky fun box. However I did a totally fresh reinstall on some new hardware 6 months ago and it's been absolutely rock solid since and updates have been one click without issue. Was still a bit of a faff to set up (though tbf that was more around the VM side of things which was my perogative)
      - mholm 3y ago
        I had the exact same experience. I might even have some comments on an old HN account complaining about HA's disregard for upgrade stability. After another broken upgrade, I finally decided to just fix my install at a certain update in March 2022 and leave it there. I left it there for over a year, until I wanted a few newer features. I carved out a chunk of my weekend to make sure I had time to fix whatever broke with everything and... nothing broke after catching up on a full year of updates. It's now faster, just as reliable, and has more features than before. Home Assistant is finally ready for primetime in the average technical user's home.
readthenotes1 3y ago
I feel the author would be wise to invest in learning some English, such as "neither... nor".
bruce343434 3y ago
Investing? To me it implies stocks. You are not investing in anything, you are consuming goods and services. When people buy loads of crap and call it "investing in a [good] ..." is that some sort of coping mechanism? No, you don't own boot futures. You bought some boots and you wear them.
- gondaloof 3y ago
  It’s my money, it’s always an investment hoping to get some return, either happiness or convenience. It’s not meant to be taken literally.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Would you invest in a sandwich? Or a foreign holiday?
- WantonQuantum 3y ago
  The verb "to invest" predates the usage you say it implies for you. This might be a sign that there are other usages.
- reedf1 3y ago
  Investing is just anything you buy with an expected return. So you can buy boots with the expectation of selling them - and that is an investment. But I completely agree with your fundamental point - it would be better described as a sunk-cost.
- tjoff 3y ago
  You invest in an ecosystem. That means that you are aware of the vendor lock-in and realize that moving to something else is going to be expensive and troublesome. Perhaps having to get rid of devices you've collected over a decade or having to engineering a hybrid solution with weird shortcomings. But by investing in it you expect returns as in a coherent system that work well together and that you can easily add more functionality over time and that also increases the utility of your existing devices. The problems associated with it are why many, like me, refuse to be so dependent on any vendor. And step one is to not buy anything that depends on the cloud to function.
cromka 3y ago
It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini speakers I use at home has become amusingly bad: not that it doesn’t understand what I want, but it will often just not execute my orders, despite understanding. For example, it recently ignores my “yes” to its “do you want to know more?” follow up questions. They keep messing it up, it used to be way better few years back.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  More likely people are just going to stop using their products.
- c4mpute 3y ago
  I think for a lawsuit to happen there would need to be some interested law firm to organize things. For them to be interested, there would need to be money in it, that means payout times number of participants. However, since nobody except a few buys google's home automation, the number of participants is too low to result in a relevant size.
- marak830 3y ago
  Against googles lawyers? It would require a massive amount of pissed off consumers, and a huge team to even drag them to court. End result would be google paying a pittance and no one getting anything. End of the day, a lot of lawyers would be paid well and google would shrug it off as a cost of business.
  - sirius87 3y ago
    With all this talk of ChatGPT clearing law school exams and all, I'd love to see a legal fight of lawyers armed with AI against "googles lawyers". I believe that'd be a net good. For everyone else in tech, I suppose we can all vow to never purchase Google products as gifts for family.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
Sosh101 3y ago
I can't understand people that want to wire up every aspect of their home to big tech cloud companies. There are plenty of options for self-hosted smart home setups.
- visarga 3y ago
  When I realized I need to register all my light bulbs and appliances and control them by janky wireless signals, with reconnect issues from time to time, I just gave up and use physical switches. They work all the time. Why would I want to open or close a light when I am 100 steps away from the button?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    You can get physical switches that are ALSO software controllable, which can be nice. Things like these: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/SingleRoomControls/CasetaWireless/Overview.aspx https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/SingleRoomContro... So you can do "Siri turn all lights off" or whatever, and still be able to turn the lights on and off if the Internet is down. Still on the fence if it's worth the cost.
  - somat 3y ago
    My plan is to physically wire everything into a controllable switch. Then I started thinking, what sort of switch is programmatically controllable, uses open standards has a large number of ports is vendor interchangeable. and it hit me. a POE ethernet switch. Now I just have to find a source of 48V leds. hashtag: only_half_joking.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    You can get smart switches, they require wiring but they work as switches without smart system. I have Zigbee and ZWave and both have been reliable. I primarily use the remote to turn on light switches from across the room. It only saves a couple of steps but the seconds add up. The big one is turning on porch light at night while standing on porch. I have turned off left on lights on way to airport. I have also set up routine to turn on lights in evening while I’m away.
indeyets 3y ago
The author mentioned they would be moving towards local smart-home solution but doesn’t mention HomeAssistant even once https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/
- bobsoap 3y ago
  That's presumably because HA is categorically outside the author's field of view, not being a branded corporate plug'n'play product with a marketing budget, but open-source with "DIY" in the first paragraph on the page. I don't think the author is interested in providing alternative solutions at all. This article reads like a cry for attention directed at Google and no one else.
  - dustincoates 3y ago
    He says in a linked post that he is using Home Assistant: https://www.androidauthority.com/affordable-connected-smart-home-3261996/ https://www.androidauthority.com/affordable-connected-smart-...
- toyg 3y ago
  I have a Google Hub and 2 Minis , would I be able to repurpose them for HA or do I have to start from scratch...? If they can't be reused, I might as well stick to Google until they get bricked (which I'm sure will happen at some point).
  - jon-wood 3y ago
    Currently, no, but HA will integrate with them and expose any devices to Google’s ecosystem (even if they don’t natively support that). You can also use devices with a screen as dashboards for HA.
    - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
      I do use Google minis with HA and can voice activate lights, shutters etc.
buro9 3y ago
I feel like I've been slowly de-Googling for many years now. A decade ago I was all-in, Chromecast Audio, Android, GSuite for a personal domain, Photos, Maps, Home products when they emerged. I'd made a bet that software could improve faster than hardware and chose to be as free in my choice of hardware as possible (Linux on a variety of machines and to bet on web software) rather than choosing a potentially more polished but closed world (Apple or Microsoft). Google for me, offered a third way. But all I learned is that the massive disconnect between units within Google would result in an experience that worsened itself on a continual basis. At first I thought it was all due to the "Google for your Domain" account as it became clear that GSuite was becoming a corp only thing. So I migrated to a Gmail account https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d2929066951 https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906... But... that didn't solve things! I got more things working, but they then felt like they diverged with limited experiences in different areas. The recognition that a home is multi-person came very late, and it's clunky. Google Music shuttered, and I could no longer upload the things that I had which they did not. So I moved to ripping my own CDs (this took 3 years!!!) and then a NAS + Plex (love this!). Gmail removed all of the personal domain things and a big redirect chain from GSuite through Gmail made debugging a missing email a pain plus so many stories about email being closed and shuttering the whole account, so I moved to Fastmail (love this!). Photos got worse (and BTW you cannot get the photos out at the same quality as you put them in unless you individually download each one!!!), so I'm now using Syncthing + NAS + Plex (it's OK for photos, not great TBH). Drive felt like it stagnated and improvements in GSuite (my work accounts) didn't feel like they hit the personal accounts (the GMail one). I moved to Syncthing + NAS (love this!), and actually opted for a Microsoft account for Office 365 (but I don't use OneDrive). Home automation was severely dented with the Sonos battle, so now all of that is Home Assistant for me (it's pretty good — still more for the advanced tinkerer than the average person in UX though). As the Sonos battle produced it's outcome I realised that actually running different things like bluetooth or PlexAmp headless works better for remote control... and honestly, Google weren't providing a great audio experience (Cast doesn't play media at it's highest quality levels and you can't get a raw digital out signal from Google's own products except a TOSlink on Chromecast Audio which is now unsupported and locked the rate to 44Khz and required upsampling in the subsequent DAC). By Google's constant fumbling here I am a decade later with very few Google products in my life. I'm down to maps (which I keep because of stars) but am increasingly using OsmAnd+, Android (but I'm open to considering an iPhone next time as case availability is an issue with Pixel devices after 1-2 years and my phones last longer than that), and my Nest doorbell (don't get me started on how bad the Nest integration has been!). I'm not rejecting Google as much as they seem to be rejecting their users. I'm just listening to what they seem to be telling me... which is that they really do not want end consumers as customers, and that's fine because many companies do and things like Fastmail, Plex, Syncthing, Signal, etc are all phenomenal and I pay or donate to all. This isn't death by a thousand paper cuts, it's death by a million paper cuts. Other products may be a little worse, but as they aren't causing paper cuts constantly they feel joyful to use by comparison.
rcarmo 3y ago
I recently went and got a couple of Lenovo ThinkSmart View displays off eBay and re-purposed them: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/04/22/1330 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/04/22/1330 The reason I got them was that I wanted small desktop displays to both replace my “now playing” Raspberry Pi display and act as smart speakers, and there didn’t seem to be anything event in the market (there are plenty of cheap Chinese tablets, but I wanted something with a standalone PSU and a proper speaker). These are not Google Home devices (they run Android Things, but a “corporate” version tailored for Teams and Zoom calling) but they are functionally equivalent and surprisingly capable. After installing Firefox and PlexAmp, they do everything I could possibly want from a kitchen-top display, and I am considering getting another one. Like the OP, I am fascinated with the fact that Google keeps shooting itself in the foot regarding home devices—-these things are as capable as any Android tablet and far more useful if you install a browser, so I honestly don’t see the point of nerfing them with fancy “home” UIs that do absolutely nothing useful. If Google stopped messing with its partners and standardized on a a more open, more third-party friendly Android Things release with just a browser, a media player and the Play Store (plus maybe a better “family” calendar UI, which I baked in with an Outlook web view), I’m betting there would be plenty of cheap Chinese clones as well… And they are more reliable to boot, since you won’t forget to charge them (no, a tablet on a dock isn’t the same thing).
- goodpoint 3y ago
  “now playing”?
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    Third link in the post: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/12/01/1920 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/12/01/1920
- bottled_poe 3y ago
  [flagged]
- JoBrad 3y ago
  That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing!
Brosper 3y ago
This website is full of Ads. On my M2 is lagging and can't scroll thought.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  A js-blocking browser extension makes the modern web far more user-friendly.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    Or pihole / adguard, which retains a level of usability that's unfortunately not present when blocking JS . (I block JS by default, but have to allow it for so many things).
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      Yes - though any decent js-blocker should allow selective enabling (by domain of origin or whatever).
- haunter 3y ago
  I'm genuinly surprised that there are people on HN without a content blocker https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
Nursie 3y ago
I gave up on Google’s stuff when Nest decided they were no longer going to function with google domain accounts. It had been fine for years, then there was an interruption in my subscription for some reason and I couldn’t re-subscribe. After multiple opaque “Sorry, not working, maybe try later messages, eventually it became clear from support forums that someone at Nest had decided that google managed domains == company email, and we aren’t going to support that because your boss might watch the feeds. Never mind if you’re using it at a company. Never mind if you’re using your domain for a family (as they used to recommend was a great use for “Google for Domains”!). Any time they were challenges they just doubled down. Ok bye then…
timellis-smith 3y ago
For me this is also a major failure of poor competition policy. If Google's smart home system were an independent company, it would love or die by its ability to do its job. But Nest can just piggy back on Google's brand power.
- kwertyoowiyop 3y ago
  As Lily Tomlin used to say in her comedy skits: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company!”
- bombcar 3y ago
  BestBuy killed their IoT HomeKit compatible switches and stuff years ago, but they 1. still work and 2. still work with HomeKit if they were installed/connected before they took down the IoT servers.
smitty1e 3y ago
In this sense, we live in a giant laser printer, and are all RMS: lacking source code makes it ridiculously hard for us to function in the face of product discontinuation. Thought balloon: should companies be legally forced to escrow their source code with the government, so that the public is left less in the lurch?
spicyusername 3y ago
Google is the new IBM.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Not really. The only thing google has ever been unambiguously successful (profitable at all?) at is ads, although PageRank was pretty good for the year or three that it worked. IBM has accomplished a ton of things.
jimmcslim 3y ago
What are the open, easy to install and use, and sustainable alternatives? It feels like enough work has been done on the margins of replicating some of the capabilities of Alexa and Google Nest hardware and software, but it’s not packaged up in an accessible way for the mass-market?
- btreecat 3y ago
  I've been running home assistant for years now.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    To be fair (and I run HA for years with an extensive set of devices), the voice part works best with Google (or probably Alexa, but I do not use Alexa). I tried Mycroft a few years ago but for one it was a hit or miss, and two there are no simple hardware devices to use it with.
  - jimmcslim 3y ago
    Yeah, Home Assistant is great. My question is... where is the nicely packaged, off the shelf, easy to use but open to expansion voice assistant that works with it?
elif 3y ago
One day I fully expect to wake up to find my phone issuing me the warning "Google Fi has been discontinued. Please find an alternative carrier by the end of the month" Or "Google Photos has been replaced by our new service, Google Pixa. Please back up your photos as they cannot be transferred to our new service" It's almost like their project/team structure depends on cannibalisation. I already lost my wedding playlist (2019) because Google decided to rebrand Google Play to YouTube Music.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > lost my wedding playlist It's the new industry normal. Amazon Prime Music zeroed out all user's investment of time spent crafting playlists, five months back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33521374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33521374
- esalman 3y ago
  I have used Google products for free all my life. In last year or so I was forced to pay for two products - one is my wife's Google Fi phone and another is a friend's Google apps suite. Both of these are ticking time bombs. These are like sensitive data that you haven't backed up. Might end in catastrophe any time. My wife's contract should be up sometime next year and that's when she'll switch to a different carrier. I also might migrate from Google apps by the end of next month.
- climb_stealth 3y ago
  Man, don't even say that! I'm seriously worried about Google Photos going away. I'm running Ente in parallel but it just isn't there yet. Especially on iOS.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  A good reminder that any of your data that exists solely in the cloud is at risk. If you're into using the cloud to store stuff, be sure to keep a copy of that stuff locally as well.
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
In this thread: people invest time into a free product and then complain that they get rugged.
- cowsandmilk 3y ago
  How are the devices Google is selling “free”? The backend services supporting them were bundled as features of the device and are part of why people paid money for the devices.
  - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
    Did I say devices? Or did I say products?
xchip 3y ago
yeah, another half-ass solution were the business model is to monitor you as much as possible by offering as less as possible
31337Logic 3y ago
Thank you, Google, for dropping support on your OnHub products. I was able to pick up a few, cheaply, from your angry users. I haven't bought a single home device from Google and have no desire to. But Google's utter lack of direction in this department means I now have 3 decent pieces of hardware running OpenWRT. Thanks again! ;-)
eimrine 3y ago
> I believe in a future where homes are connected, smarter, and automated enough not to require switches (...) An average switch can work probably more than an average human, not requires any king-for-a-day with their blessed updates and even continues to work when the supplier stops his business. This article maybe should be not about Google but about any IoT because you can do all kinds of automatization with the power supply to your 120V/230V stuff just on your DIN rail on your switchboard and you know what? Stuff on DIN rail will continue its work even if your counry will be invaded by Ruscists with problems such as rolling blackouts, bad Internet connection, or if your location considered to be under some embargo, or even if the master of the home has been killed and somebody (such as certified electrician) must to figure out how this automatization works (I mean that no electrician can do anything to your switchboard if there are no switches). > The aforementioned update on the Lenovo Smart Display nerfed the one thing I used it most for — streaming web video content in the kitchen. Why to use this walled-garden approach? You can use use any upto 15yo laptop on x86 architecture with some free and open source OS, or you can use any non-Smart display with Raspberry-like computer which obviously is going to serve you as long as Raspberry's video coprocessor will keep supporting actual Youtube's video codec. > I struggle to understand what Google is thinking; the upgrade cycle for a security system should be measured in ten-plus years, if not more. What an ugly lie! Security systems should be shaped in such a way that no guy except you has an access to a root.
- DocTomoe 3y ago
  > You can use use any upto 15yo laptop on x86 architecture with some free and open source OS, or you can use any non-Smart display with Raspberry-like computer which obviously is going to serve you as long as Raspberry's video coprocessor will keep supporting actual Youtube's video codec. Which is all nice and cool as long as only tech geeks live in a household. The moment you are trying to make an aesthetically pleasing home, old monitors and green electronics boards are a no-go.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    This is a battle of aesthetically-looking stuff but not yours vs long-living stuff but having wires and boards everywhere. Former has some aestetics on surfare level but malware on deep levels. Latter looks like crap but has some aestetics on deep level. Everybody has his deepness of sensivity to aestetics.
nickpeterson 3y ago
I’d haven’t really considered this angle, but if ChatGPT is an existential threat to Google search, we’re probably going to see signs that Google is ignoring even more if these side projects.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  All these dead products could have been creating a revenue moat against the fall of ad revenue and the onset of a competitor. But they pissed away decades of innovation through poor product management, bad incentives, and such hubris like the world has never seen. We’re seeing Google reap what they have sowed. What a waste.
account-5 3y ago
This sort of shit is the reason they will never get me to use their passkey implementation. The sooner there's a truly portable open source offline version of passkeys I'm all in. Until then I'm sticking with my password manager. I do feel the only thing you can really trust from Google are the things that make them money. Chrome, and any software that allows them to hook into for advertising money. It makes me worry about go, dart, and flutter. Though the latter two include analytics which you need to disable.
- ssbash 3y ago
  I believe security keys are the offline version of passkeys you're looking for. I am afraid that websites will somehow disable support security keys and only support passkey implementations from big tech (similar to how websites only offer signin with google, fb , etc). Can someone clarify if WebAuthn protocol allows for this filtering against hardware authenticators?
  - blibble 3y ago
    yes, there's an attestation cert as part of the register request
    - pabs3 3y ago
      I hear that the way Big Tech implements passkeys means that it is impossible to require attestation to prove use of their implementations.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right, but I think it’s not all bad to only use auth from big tech - I don’t know if I trust most small companies to implement uname/password auth correctly. Most users recycle passwords too so a leak is really bad. I think the reason to only support big tech passkey auth is because users (at scale) can’t be trusted to keep track of their hardware keys.
- pabs3 3y ago
anon050723 3y ago
I've been really happy with a Hubitat Elevation[1], controlling misc z-wave and zigbee devices. I've had mine for over three years and it continues to get updates[2]. Nearly every device I've considered has had either a provided or community written driver[3] available. 1: https://hubitat.com/ https://hubitat.com/ 2: https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-2-3-5-available/113395 https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-2-3-5-available/1133... 3: https://community.hubitat.com/t/custom-device-drivers-wiki https://community.hubitat.com/t/custom-device-drivers-wiki
phantomics 3y ago
You either die an innovator, or you live long enough to see yourself become a Yahoo.
nbzso 3y ago
The biggest unanswered question for me in recent years is how educated people with a tech background have trusted a big corporation which publicly stated years ago that they existence goal is to build the digital GOD (AGI). It's beyond my imagination. The same with OpenAI craze now. Why I would give my personal or corporate information to them or Microsoft? To learn more about my process patterns and RLHF their models for free? I understand the normies, they have no clue. But this?
- eimrine 3y ago
  There is a good article [1] just has been spawned on "New", maybe it answers your question. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35850843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35850843
- meindnoch 3y ago
  Maybe "educated people with a tech background" aren't as intelligent as you thought?
  - nbzso 3y ago
    Uncomfortably, after leading several teams I lean to this direction, but I never forget that I am biased too.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
SergeAx 3y ago
I love this approach. While the device is in use - it is ours, and you cannot open, repair, modify it of its firmware. When we discontinue it - it is your problem, we got your money, end of story.
vachina 3y ago
I think a good rule of thumb is not investing in any hardware which has its functionality depend on someone else’s RPC endpoint, especially for something as trivial as switching things on and off.
Barrin92 3y ago
The Google specific issues aside I wonder if the average smart-home enthusiast will ever make 10% of the money and time back they apparently invest into their smart homes. To me this isn't really about a single company, it's about shoving so much tech into your home that barely does anything it's no wonder something always breaks. How many years of uninterrupted light switch pressing do you need to do before this actually pays off?
nologic01 3y ago
I read 'smart phone' instead of 'smart home' and for a brief blissful moment I thought, wow, what did I miss? Is this the year of the linux phone? Old enough to live perfectly well without a smart home but alas young enough so impossible to live without a smart phone.
jacooper 3y ago
> Step by step, my goal is to build out an entirely self-hosted ecosystem. The only viable way.
chkaloon 3y ago
Home Assistant. Definitely DIY, but works great
Saris 3y ago
Everyone should be wary of anything google (or really any company) makes, and ask yourself "what happens when they stop supporting this". Their phones are fine, those are easily flashed with many other ROMs. But anything locked down like smart home stuff should be avoided. Same with any online services that don't easily support data export to something else.
benknight87 3y ago
This doesn't even mention the fact that even 7 years in, the UX is a daily nightmare, for me at least. * My speakers randomly don't show up as options when casting * With two speakers in my house, they often both answer at the same time or one of them waits a few seconds and says something went wrong * Bluetooth randomly stops working sometimes and requires a power cycle. The list goes on.
ikesau 3y ago
There's an uncanny SEO-optimizing style to this article. Reminds me of this scene from Return of the Killer Tomatoes https://youtu.be/pXzsYIBVUB0?t=3841 https://youtu.be/pXzsYIBVUB0?t=3841
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Yeah, it feels like the whole thing could have been two paragraphs. And why is there a poll at the start?
kderbyma 3y ago
Google will be dead soon. They will need a to resurrect something besides an inanimate corpse.....But again. HR doesn't care...neither does anyone who hires anyone...and most of all...neither do the execs. it's a dying horse they are trying to ride into town....
snthd 3y ago
Google don't make smart home products, they make cloud home products.
Aeolun 3y ago
These days I find it really hard to not immediately respond with ‘I dunno what you expected to happen’. Is there someone still building anything that relies on a given Google service still being around and working in a year?
rch 3y ago
Something about Google's incentive structure is eating them alive. For instance, there's an alarm setting on Android (Pixel) for "Night Mode: Very dim display (for dark rooms)". Which I interpret as a Googler's way of saying: "my bonus is tied to minutes of display visibility while charging, so F users there's no way to turn the display off."
- maxerickson 3y ago
  On my Pixel, there's a "Keep the Screen Dark" in the digital well being settings. It's nested 4 screens in or whatever, but it's there. Going from an older device to a Pixel 6, I would say that there is some additional complexity in the settings, but directionally, the changes make the device nicer to use. So like the setting in the alarm isn't the overall device control, it's deep in the digital well being settings (complexity), but there is a way to set the phone to be less disruptive, with quite a bit of control (directionally correct).
  - rch 3y ago
    I had used an option like that, until about 6 months ago IIRC. It's gone now. However I've just found something under Settings - Accessibility that might mitigate the problem a little more. Extra dim: dim screen beyond your phone's minimum brightness. It still won't really be off though, most likely. And the text labels on these settings belong in a Monty Python sketch about product management.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      Preface: I’m an iPhone user, but I’m kinda confused what you’re trying to achieve that can’t be had with just pressing the physical button the phone to turn off the screen. Does the screen need to be on for the alarm to work?
      - rch 3y ago
        To clarify: the issue is that the screen stays illuminated when charging on the stand. Pressing the physical button used to work, even with the current oddball settings. It only stopped being effective a few weeks ago, when using a wireless charging stand. It still works when I switch back to USB charging. Presumably because it would be too easy to simply place the phone face down, effectively revealing user preference.
linsomniac 3y ago
My primary use of the Home speakers is playing music in the shower. That experience is actually pretty bad though, over the years between google music and spotify, getting it to play my music is just horribly obtuse. I can't reliably get it to start my music. "Playing a playlist called my favorites" or similar rather than playing my own playlist. At one point after 3-4 failed attempts like this I said "F you" and the speaker said "Don't speak to me like that." So I unplugged it.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  I still want profanity mode. Hurling insults at a Google Assistant and having to roast me in return would be amazing.
  - linsomniac 3y ago
    That's not really what I'm looking for, of course. At the time it was feeling a bit like "3 times is enemy action". A person, if I had asked them to play my playlist and they put on "KidzBopz" or other "decidedly not my playlists", they'd be like "Ok, I've pushed this gag far enough." But seriously, I still haven't plugged that thing back in, it's been over a year. The only reliable way I could get to start my playlists was to use my phone, at which point I might as well just be using a bluetooth speaker, which is what I've been doing the last year.
  - LightBug1 3y ago
    "Fuck you, Dave. Fuuuuuuuck you!!!!! You and your shitty little ReVanced app" That would be pretty awesome.
  - lodovic 3y ago
    It should not respond like with "don't talk to me like that". It is a device, not a person, it has no feelings, and it is being used in a private home. No reason to police speech there.
    - throwwwaway69 3y ago
tacocataco 3y ago
I feel like if a product is abandoned it should become freeware for all to use so the electronic devices involved have a less of a chance to become ewaste. Kind of how copyright (was supposed to) work, giving access to the public eventually.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Unfortunately it's often not entirely up to the company to decide. They likely use components and software written by various other companies which require strict controls over who may have access to it. The nature of those contracts would have to change first.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    It should be easy to pass a law that makes all these contracts null and void. The end-users' rights should be supreme. If the companies making components don't like this, they should be more careful about who they sell components to.
erocs 3y ago
If this isn't a straightforward anti-competitive lawsuit I don't know what would be.
GrumpyNl 3y ago
I had to, manually, disable over 50 cookies on that site, crazy.
fencepost 3y ago
The only thing Google can be depended on to do with lower volume products and services is kill them. The same seems to apply to services with no way to run ads. I'm kind of amazed that Google Voice is still around, though at this point it may be tied in with Google Fi and letting them lean on each other.
chaostheory 3y ago
For me this feeling happened after they killed Nest Secure
coldtea 3y ago
Pro tip: unless you have some handicaps and need the extra automation, don't invest in any "smart home" ecosystem. They are dumb, and more trouble than worth it.
riemannzeta 3y ago
Their position in the Sonos lawsuits is looking pretty stubborn and selfish at this point. Just pay for a license rather than inconveniencing your customers. They should be working together rather than fighting over a royalty that's relatively small to Google and huge to Sonos. Seems stupid to me.
riemannzeta 3y ago
The ultimate question for consumers though is this: Are you better off in the Apple ecosystem? As bad as things are with Google, the answer is probably no. But not many have the time, tools, and training to be independent of either.
- WA 3y ago
  So far, the answer actually seems to be yes. But maybe you can clarify your metric by which you measure "better off".
- Larrikin 3y ago
  You are not better off in one walled garden over the other. With greedy corporations in the US pushing subscriptions for products that get discontinued and China spinning up cheap crap companies everyday, there is zero reason to invest in anything IoT in your home that is not fully open sourced or completely cracked. Currently the best indicator is checking Home assistant's or ESPHome's integrations. I'm a little worried that they are guided by one company, Nabu Casa, but atleast the product is open source so the community can take over if they pull an OpenAI and completely reverse. They cater to a very combative group of customers that will absolutely take over the product if they get greedy.
- microtonal 3y ago
  I dug out an old Airport Extreme when a Fritz!Box at the office had some issues. It worked fine as ever and even better, there was even a security update waiting. The device is from 2013. The third generation Apple TV from 2012 had 120 months of updates (the last update was Apple TV Software 7.9 in March 2022). So at the very least it sounds like they are doing pretty ok.
michelledepeil 3y ago
This is, imo, not a google-problem, but a non-FLOSS problem.
gumby 3y ago
FTA: > “Google’s directionless approach” This phrase has applied to all parts of google since the departure of Schmidt. I used to think it was a shame, but eventually realized we’ve been lucky.
cfeduke 3y ago
Google has done the same thing to Nest Secure. I removed an ADT system from my office because the monthly monitoring from ADT was $39.99 - the ADT system came with the office. I installed the Nest Secure cameras and system myself, even running USB power outside the office through the masonry. The monitoring was adequate - notifications sent to my phone - and Internet storage pricing was acceptable. But as of April 2024 the service is being shut down and I can opt to have an ADT system installed - a $485 value! - and pay a monthly monitoring fee. (Or I can receive a $200 credit on the Google store, presumably to buy some other technology they are going to sunset.)
- Corrado 3y ago
  Yea, the Google store credit really feels like a slap in the face. "Hey, if you liked the old thing that we took away you should purchase the new thing that we'll take away."
mulmen 3y ago
Why would anyone have trusted Google on this in the first place? It’s such an obvious outcome I struggle to understand how anyone expected anything different. This is why we have open standards and interoperability. Imagine if you can only buy lamps from IKEA because your whole house has proprietary outlets. Who signs up for that?
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  People in the 60s: the government will wiretap your home. People now: hey wire tap, can cats eat pancakes?
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    I remember when discussions about surveillance involved obscure facts about the actual construction of an ancient device called a "pen register." Now you're a Russian spy if you don't think the CIA should be placing employees in the C-suites of all communications companies. The amount of control and surveillance we inflicted on the children of the 90s has become the new expectation for adult citizens.
sagarpatil 3y ago
Alexa isn’t any better either. I had Alexa’s in each room and when I used to ask her to start the AC, it would start AC in some other room (this is after assigning the Alexa and AC to that particular room). That right there is a deal breaker for me, I can’t keep telling my guests every time what’s the room called and have them remember it.
- Corrado 3y ago
  Alexa is weird this way. It has the ability to assign things to certain areas, it's just hard to figure out how to make it happen. For example, I have Alexa controlled lights in my basement and it knows what to turn on when I say "Turn on the lights" while in my basement. I also have Alexa controlled lights in my garage, and until recently I specifically had to tell it "Turn on the garage lights" while standing in my garage. However, I made a change recently (I can't remember what it was) and now my garage auto-magically knows that I'm talking about it's lights while I'm in the garage. So, I think Alexa has the ability to know which A/C unit your talking about while standing in the room, but it's not clear how to make it happen. Also, it sometimes stops working, even after you have it configured correctly; that's the real frustrating part!
  - grrdotcloud 3y ago
    Every device in each room has a different trigger wake word. That eliminated them being triggered by proximity. Then each smart device has a unique name based upon their function. Dog names or primary user. Echo/Computer/Alexia, turn on Fido (outdoor lights) Pairing by voice is also helpful.
kkfx 3y ago
Two notes: - only open standard design can operate together with not-too-much issues; - actual state of home automation is a directionless mess. About the first point: the most common protocol for "smart devices"/home appliances, those who can actually talk to something else regardless of the vendor is ModBUS, a serial protocol from the '70s. The newer MQTT, Kafka etc are very rarely supported on commercial devices. Long story short: the sole way we can get different tools from different OEMs playing together is that such interoperability is mandatory by law, carefully tested, with sanctions when found absent. Without that NO OEM will really be interoperable with anything, it's own products together included. For the second point: MOST home automation is just about flipping switches with some logic behind, the rest is just monitoring. A VERY SIMPLE THING, unfortunately almost no vendor and perhaps also most designers have no clue about how and what to automate. Even the more expensive and trendy tools, like p.v. systems to be potentially integrated with car charging systems etc aren't really integrated even under a single OEM umbrella. Essentially: just invest in home automation if you really want to do something and be prepared to long frustration, high costs and unreliable, fragile stuff.
erickf1 3y ago
I stopped using Google products a long time ago. Seeing articles like this and hearing what others are dealing with just encourages me to see that I made the right choice.
einpoklum 3y ago
I'm never lending money to Bernie Madoff again!
Animats 3y ago
If your Google account is cancelled, do you freeze in the dark?
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
Reminder that Google is an ad company with a large number of hobbies. You cannot trust Google to continue doing anything that doesn’t generate (directly or indirectly) substantial ad revenue.
opmelogy 3y ago
Google has a history of killing off products that are actively used by people. The trust is broken at this point. I'm super weary of relying on Google for anything now.
allenrb 3y ago
How can it not be obvious by now that if you want to control the experience, you need to own and control the hardware and software? Why would anyone ever trust anything else to remain stable over the long term?
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Let's be fair to a small degree: Every goddamn "smarthome" vendor is doing fake open, embrace and extend, partial protocol, hidden preference for its hardware, scummy foot dragging on good standards. It's just that Google adds completely rudderless leadership, its world famous utter disregard for customer support, and complete lack of commitment to the recipe.
ouid 3y ago
because its dumb to put a computer whose behavior you cannot check and which regularly receives "updates" in charge of something that couldn't even be called an inconvenience before, like walking to the thermostat or flipping a lightswitch?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pers0n 3y ago
What happens when your smart device is 7-15+yrs old and isnt supported by anything anymore?
phendrenad2 3y ago
I moved off of all Google services years ago, when people were taking to Twitter and Hacker News to get support for their randomly banned GMail accounts. At that point it was already clear that Google only cares about maintaining their google/youtube/advertising dominance at all costs, and their other products only exist to confuse competitors. I'd like to run some services on Google Cloud someday, because it looks like they have a nice cloud offering, but I won't touch it because of this.
rektide 3y ago
This is just what corporatism is. Directionless ever shifting Objectives and Key Results (OKR) and forever chasing the New Addressable Market (NAM). There's plenty of believers & folks fighting for causes, but no real overall motivation for long term excellence, for building a future. No vision & no one in charge & no persistence. Organizations are made of people, and over time and as they shift & scale, they lose direction purpose & caring, they lack the filter & will & cohesion to follow through, to tend to the affairs they set in motion. Sectors of companies rise and fall with the tides. Google really is one of the saddest cases on the planet today. They arose from the web, from interconnectivity. They had great APIs that allowed new things to be built. And you'd think IoT/smarthome would be a perfect venue to deploy this genetic advantage, to build great apis, to help arise a new backbone of possibility. But Google has gotten worse and worse and worse at opening possibilities. G+ social network never got an API. Google smart home had a meager set of APIs and it's mostly shrunk in capabilities over time (conversely, they did (finally) land some local network apis capabilities a few years back). We're in a sad age, where security & assurability trumps possibility; Google is trying to restrict & clamp down & remove app stores, rather than enable broader possibilities. A scared company is not fun to watch.
windex 3y ago
Never trust google products, I will never forget losing google reader.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
I agree, I went all in on nest hubs/minis etc to have assistant for making requests to control stuff. I've got a bunch of Xiaomi and custom sensors and other devices hooked up to home assistant with a relay through to Google (that I've had to pay for...because Google's home ecosystem is just fucking terrible, anybody could do better with their eyes closed). I've noticed over time that assistant has become much dumber, is prone to misunderstanding what you say, Google sucks at hardware their wifi antennas are total crap, any minor latency between multiple assistant devices will result in them all trying to respond rather than the closest one, it's just a nightmare. I haven't done any personal projects in a long time but I think it's about time I start playing with the OpenAI apis + whisper and see if I can't build a better assistant.
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Aha, as a follow-up this conveniently appeared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rIvB3LZiKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rIvB3LZiKA but still not to the degree I want. Hmmm, time to get started.
Friedduck 3y ago
I’ll add my lament. We use nest cameras, a nest thermostat and google WiFi. As part of their recent forced account merge our WiFi controls no longer work. Their apps are buggy and freeze-prone, and ironically continually trying to sell more product when the existing ones don’t work well. I’m regrettably having to replace everything to get off this treadmill. Lesson learned.

498 points by Corrado 3y ago

I recently bought a Nest thermostat and regret it. Two months in and the wifi went bad. Apparently a common problem. Support agrees to send me a replacement, but they end up sending it to the wrong address.

sshumaker 3y ago
I had the same issue, but support kept disconnecting me and I had to start all over again going through the entire “try all of the brain dead stuff like resetting” 3 times, before I finally gave up and just ordered a new Nest and ate the cost.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  Why did you buy the same device after a bad experience? That’s just encouraging the fuckers.

Corrado 3y ago

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Google AP and it still gets updates and I'm free to change the settings at any time. Another example was my old Nest thermostat. I was so excited to up-my-game and replace the old, crappy thermostat with something that could change the temperature based on the weather forecast. My happiness was short lived; Google purchased Nest and forced everyone to change over to their Google account. Then features stopped working. I finally had to remove the Nest and replace it with something else, mostly because Google just seemed to not care anymore.

goosedragons 3y ago
TBF Airport Extremes stopped getting updates years ago. The last update was 7.9.1 from 2019. Granted you can still change settings and not being able to do that after discontinuation is pretty inexcusable.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  I scored a handful of these years ago, and they still run my house internet. Airport utility still works too. On all devices. They are great little APs.
knolan 3y ago
I love my Time Capsule. It worked flawlessly for a nearly a decade when the disk inevitably failed. I still use it in my office for backups with a new disk. I wish Apple still made them and made swapping disks tool free.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I had an AirPort Express as an audio bridge to my stereo for years, maybe a decade? Thing was bullet-proof and the only reason I finally put it down was all the new stereos have built-in casting of some sort. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203874699472 https://www.ebay.com/itm/203874699472 was great, had everything you could want in a compact size, and was compatible with the power adapter cables (which are still the same these days)!
- katbyte 3y ago
  Is time capsule any different the Time Machine backups to networked eogtage?
  - knolan 3y ago
    No, but the hardware was neat.
largepeepee 3y ago

nunodonato 3y ago

People just don't seem to learn what google is like...

bell-cot 3y ago
The internet is a series of pipes, connected to an infinite supply of useful idiots, who are just waiting to be duped and bilked. /s?
smt88 3y ago
I know what Google is like. As a smartphone user, I only have two options if I want my phone and smart home to work in the same ecosystem: Apple and Google. I don't even know how this is possible, but Siri is worse, so I'm stuck with Google.

bitwize 3y ago

While touring the house we eventually bought, my wife spied a Nest on the wall and said, "Oh, that's one thing bitwize is gonna want to rip out." Hooking your home up to the cloud and depending on cloud services for its operation just strikes me as the king of dumb ideas. You've got private, intimate data flowing to who knows where, cloud malfunctions affecting regular home operations (this has already happened at least once with the Nest), and what's discussed here: here-today, gone-tomorrow support with no recourse once the vendor decides to turn support off.

leipert 3y ago
Jup. A family member has Nest thermostats. Server went down. The thermostats cranked up to 30C / 86F as the failure mode. Just makes no sense. I get that you don’t want freezing pipes, if the server goes down, but come on.
- Bluecobra 3y ago
  That sounds a bit far fetched to me, I have had my Internet go down multiple times and never have a Nest problem. In fact I don’t even think an Internet connection is required if you just want it to be a dumb thermostat. The default safety settings on my nest is 45F for heat and 95F for AC. This setting is user adjustable so maybe your family member override it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - leipert 3y ago
    You are probably in the US. In Germany usually each radiator has a thermostat and you usually do not have wall thermostats unless you have floor heating. That being said, I’ve double checked and it is Netatmo [0] and not Nest. The point still stands, that some cloud based home automation devices behave stupid if they cannot talk to the server. [0]: https://www.netatmo.com/en-gb/additional-smart-radiator-valve https://www.netatmo.com/en-gb/additional-smart-radiator-valv...
- 3y ago

eska 3y ago

https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ I’m sorry but you’re asking for it when you go Google.

ilayn 3y ago

If only the author knew to what level Home Assistant reached, they would not even bother with google or alexa.

gondaloof 3y ago
What can HA do that Google/Alexa can’t?
- c4mpute 3y ago
  Break even faster. Upgrading HA is a chore, it frequently breaks, ceases to understand its own configuration, drops integrations.
  - kweingar 3y ago
    Not sure why this was downvoted. This has been my experience. It’s quite high maintenance.
  - srmarm 3y ago
    I had this experience a few years back and just put it in the sorta janky but hacky fun box. However I did a totally fresh reinstall on some new hardware 6 months ago and it's been absolutely rock solid since and updates have been one click without issue. Was still a bit of a faff to set up (though tbf that was more around the VM side of things which was my perogative)
    - mholm 3y ago
      I had the exact same experience. I might even have some comments on an old HN account complaining about HA's disregard for upgrade stability. After another broken upgrade, I finally decided to just fix my install at a certain update in March 2022 and leave it there. I left it there for over a year, until I wanted a few newer features. I carved out a chunk of my weekend to make sure I had time to fix whatever broke with everything and... nothing broke after catching up on a full year of updates. It's now faster, just as reliable, and has more features than before. Home Assistant is finally ready for primetime in the average technical user's home.

readthenotes1 3y ago

I feel the author would be wise to invest in learning some English, such as "neither... nor".

bruce343434 3y ago

Investing? To me it implies stocks. You are not investing in anything, you are consuming goods and services. When people buy loads of crap and call it "investing in a [good] ..." is that some sort of coping mechanism? No, you don't own boot futures. You bought some boots and you wear them.

gondaloof 3y ago
It’s my money, it’s always an investment hoping to get some return, either happiness or convenience. It’s not meant to be taken literally.
- michaelt 3y ago
  Would you invest in a sandwich? Or a foreign holiday?
WantonQuantum 3y ago
The verb "to invest" predates the usage you say it implies for you. This might be a sign that there are other usages.
reedf1 3y ago
Investing is just anything you buy with an expected return. So you can buy boots with the expectation of selling them - and that is an investment. But I completely agree with your fundamental point - it would be better described as a sunk-cost.
tjoff 3y ago
You invest in an ecosystem. That means that you are aware of the vendor lock-in and realize that moving to something else is going to be expensive and troublesome. Perhaps having to get rid of devices you've collected over a decade or having to engineering a hybrid solution with weird shortcomings. But by investing in it you expect returns as in a coherent system that work well together and that you can easily add more functionality over time and that also increases the utility of your existing devices. The problems associated with it are why many, like me, refuse to be so dependent on any vendor. And step one is to not buy anything that depends on the cloud to function.

cromka 3y ago

It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini speakers I use at home has become amusingly bad: not that it doesn’t understand what I want, but it will often just not execute my orders, despite understanding. For example, it recently ignores my “yes” to its “do you want to know more?” follow up questions. They keep messing it up, it used to be way better few years back.

tjpnz 3y ago
More likely people are just going to stop using their products.
c4mpute 3y ago
I think for a lawsuit to happen there would need to be some interested law firm to organize things. For them to be interested, there would need to be money in it, that means payout times number of participants. However, since nobody except a few buys google's home automation, the number of participants is too low to result in a relevant size.
marak830 3y ago
Against googles lawyers? It would require a massive amount of pissed off consumers, and a huge team to even drag them to court. End result would be google paying a pittance and no one getting anything. End of the day, a lot of lawyers would be paid well and google would shrug it off as a cost of business.
- sirius87 3y ago
  With all this talk of ChatGPT clearing law school exams and all, I'd love to see a legal fight of lawyers armed with AI against "googles lawyers". I believe that'd be a net good. For everyone else in tech, I suppose we can all vow to never purchase Google products as gifts for family.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago

Sosh101 3y ago

I can't understand people that want to wire up every aspect of their home to big tech cloud companies. There are plenty of options for self-hosted smart home setups.

visarga 3y ago
When I realized I need to register all my light bulbs and appliances and control them by janky wireless signals, with reconnect issues from time to time, I just gave up and use physical switches. They work all the time. Why would I want to open or close a light when I am 100 steps away from the button?
- bombcar 3y ago
  You can get physical switches that are ALSO software controllable, which can be nice. Things like these: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/SingleRoomControls/CasetaWireless/Overview.aspx https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/SingleRoomContro... So you can do "Siri turn all lights off" or whatever, and still be able to turn the lights on and off if the Internet is down. Still on the fence if it's worth the cost.
- somat 3y ago
  My plan is to physically wire everything into a controllable switch. Then I started thinking, what sort of switch is programmatically controllable, uses open standards has a large number of ports is vendor interchangeable. and it hit me. a POE ethernet switch. Now I just have to find a source of 48V leds. hashtag: only_half_joking.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  You can get smart switches, they require wiring but they work as switches without smart system. I have Zigbee and ZWave and both have been reliable. I primarily use the remote to turn on light switches from across the room. It only saves a couple of steps but the seconds add up. The big one is turning on porch light at night while standing on porch. I have turned off left on lights on way to airport. I have also set up routine to turn on lights in evening while I’m away.

indeyets 3y ago

The author mentioned they would be moving towards local smart-home solution but doesn’t mention HomeAssistant even once https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/

bobsoap 3y ago
That's presumably because HA is categorically outside the author's field of view, not being a branded corporate plug'n'play product with a marketing budget, but open-source with "DIY" in the first paragraph on the page. I don't think the author is interested in providing alternative solutions at all. This article reads like a cry for attention directed at Google and no one else.
- dustincoates 3y ago
  He says in a linked post that he is using Home Assistant: https://www.androidauthority.com/affordable-connected-smart-home-3261996/ https://www.androidauthority.com/affordable-connected-smart-...
toyg 3y ago
I have a Google Hub and 2 Minis , would I be able to repurpose them for HA or do I have to start from scratch...? If they can't be reused, I might as well stick to Google until they get bricked (which I'm sure will happen at some point).
- jon-wood 3y ago
  Currently, no, but HA will integrate with them and expose any devices to Google’s ecosystem (even if they don’t natively support that). You can also use devices with a screen as dashboards for HA.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    I do use Google minis with HA and can voice activate lights, shutters etc.

buro9 3y ago

I feel like I've been slowly de-Googling for many years now. A decade ago I was all-in, Chromecast Audio, Android, GSuite for a personal domain, Photos, Maps, Home products when they emerged. I'd made a bet that software could improve faster than hardware and chose to be as free in my choice of hardware as possible (Linux on a variety of machines and to bet on web software) rather than choosing a potentially more polished but closed world (Apple or Microsoft). Google for me, offered a third way. But all I learned is that the massive disconnect between units within Google would result in an experience that worsened itself on a continual basis. At first I thought it was all due to the "Google for your Domain" account as it became clear that GSuite was becoming a corp only thing. So I migrated to a Gmail account https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d2929066951 https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906... But... that didn't solve things! I got more things working, but they then felt like they diverged with limited experiences in different areas. The recognition that a home is multi-person came very late, and it's clunky. Google Music shuttered, and I could no longer upload the things that I had which they did not. So I moved to ripping my own CDs (this took 3 years!!!) and then a NAS + Plex (love this!). Gmail removed all of the personal domain things and a big redirect chain from GSuite through Gmail made debugging a missing email a pain plus so many stories about email being closed and shuttering the whole account, so I moved to Fastmail (love this!). Photos got worse (and BTW you cannot get the photos out at the same quality as you put them in unless you individually download each one!!!), so I'm now using Syncthing + NAS + Plex (it's OK for photos, not great TBH). Drive felt like it stagnated and improvements in GSuite (my work accounts) didn't feel like they hit the personal accounts (the GMail one). I moved to Syncthing + NAS (love this!), and actually opted for a Microsoft account for Office 365 (but I don't use OneDrive). Home automation was severely dented with the Sonos battle, so now all of that is Home Assistant for me (it's pretty good — still more for the advanced tinkerer than the average person in UX though). As the Sonos battle produced it's outcome I realised that actually running different things like bluetooth or PlexAmp headless works better for remote control... and honestly, Google weren't providing a great audio experience (Cast doesn't play media at it's highest quality levels and you can't get a raw digital out signal from Google's own products except a TOSlink on Chromecast Audio which is now unsupported and locked the rate to 44Khz and required upsampling in the subsequent DAC). By Google's constant fumbling here I am a decade later with very few Google products in my life. I'm down to maps (which I keep because of stars) but am increasingly using OsmAnd+, Android (but I'm open to considering an iPhone next time as case availability is an issue with Pixel devices after 1-2 years and my phones last longer than that), and my Nest doorbell (don't get me started on how bad the Nest integration has been!). I'm not rejecting Google as much as they seem to be rejecting their users. I'm just listening to what they seem to be telling me... which is that they really do not want end consumers as customers, and that's fine because many companies do and things like Fastmail, Plex, Syncthing, Signal, etc are all phenomenal and I pay or donate to all. This isn't death by a thousand paper cuts, it's death by a million paper cuts. Other products may be a little worse, but as they aren't causing paper cuts constantly they feel joyful to use by comparison.

rcarmo 3y ago

I recently went and got a couple of Lenovo ThinkSmart View displays off eBay and re-purposed them: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/04/22/1330 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/04/22/1330 The reason I got them was that I wanted small desktop displays to both replace my “now playing” Raspberry Pi display and act as smart speakers, and there didn’t seem to be anything event in the market (there are plenty of cheap Chinese tablets, but I wanted something with a standalone PSU and a proper speaker). These are not Google Home devices (they run Android Things, but a “corporate” version tailored for Teams and Zoom calling) but they are functionally equivalent and surprisingly capable. After installing Firefox and PlexAmp, they do everything I could possibly want from a kitchen-top display, and I am considering getting another one. Like the OP, I am fascinated with the fact that Google keeps shooting itself in the foot regarding home devices—-these things are as capable as any Android tablet and far more useful if you install a browser, so I honestly don’t see the point of nerfing them with fancy “home” UIs that do absolutely nothing useful. If Google stopped messing with its partners and standardized on a a more open, more third-party friendly Android Things release with just a browser, a media player and the Play Store (plus maybe a better “family” calendar UI, which I baked in with an Outlook web view), I’m betting there would be plenty of cheap Chinese clones as well… And they are more reliable to boot, since you won’t forget to charge them (no, a tablet on a dock isn’t the same thing).

goodpoint 3y ago
“now playing”?
- rcarmo 3y ago
  Third link in the post: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/12/01/1920 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/12/01/1920
bottled_poe 3y ago
[flagged]
JoBrad 3y ago
That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing!

Brosper 3y ago

This website is full of Ads. On my M2 is lagging and can't scroll thought.

bell-cot 3y ago
A js-blocking browser extension makes the modern web far more user-friendly.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Or pihole / adguard, which retains a level of usability that's unfortunately not present when blocking JS . (I block JS by default, but have to allow it for so many things).
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    Yes - though any decent js-blocker should allow selective enabling (by domain of origin or whatever).
haunter 3y ago
I'm genuinly surprised that there are people on HN without a content blocker https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Nursie 3y ago

I gave up on Google’s stuff when Nest decided they were no longer going to function with google domain accounts. It had been fine for years, then there was an interruption in my subscription for some reason and I couldn’t re-subscribe. After multiple opaque “Sorry, not working, maybe try later messages, eventually it became clear from support forums that someone at Nest had decided that google managed domains == company email, and we aren’t going to support that because your boss might watch the feeds. Never mind if you’re using it at a company. Never mind if you’re using your domain for a family (as they used to recommend was a great use for “Google for Domains”!). Any time they were challenges they just doubled down. Ok bye then…

timellis-smith 3y ago

For me this is also a major failure of poor competition policy. If Google's smart home system were an independent company, it would love or die by its ability to do its job. But Nest can just piggy back on Google's brand power.

kwertyoowiyop 3y ago
As Lily Tomlin used to say in her comedy skits: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company!”
bombcar 3y ago
BestBuy killed their IoT HomeKit compatible switches and stuff years ago, but they 1. still work and 2. still work with HomeKit if they were installed/connected before they took down the IoT servers.

smitty1e 3y ago

In this sense, we live in a giant laser printer, and are all RMS: lacking source code makes it ridiculously hard for us to function in the face of product discontinuation. Thought balloon: should companies be legally forced to escrow their source code with the government, so that the public is left less in the lurch?

spicyusername 3y ago

Google is the new IBM.

pessimizer 3y ago
Not really. The only thing google has ever been unambiguously successful (profitable at all?) at is ads, although PageRank was pretty good for the year or three that it worked. IBM has accomplished a ton of things.

jimmcslim 3y ago

What are the open, easy to install and use, and sustainable alternatives? It feels like enough work has been done on the margins of replicating some of the capabilities of Alexa and Google Nest hardware and software, but it’s not packaged up in an accessible way for the mass-market?

btreecat 3y ago
I've been running home assistant for years now.
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  To be fair (and I run HA for years with an extensive set of devices), the voice part works best with Google (or probably Alexa, but I do not use Alexa). I tried Mycroft a few years ago but for one it was a hit or miss, and two there are no simple hardware devices to use it with.
- jimmcslim 3y ago
  Yeah, Home Assistant is great. My question is... where is the nicely packaged, off the shelf, easy to use but open to expansion voice assistant that works with it?

elif 3y ago

One day I fully expect to wake up to find my phone issuing me the warning "Google Fi has been discontinued. Please find an alternative carrier by the end of the month" Or "Google Photos has been replaced by our new service, Google Pixa. Please back up your photos as they cannot be transferred to our new service" It's almost like their project/team structure depends on cannibalisation. I already lost my wedding playlist (2019) because Google decided to rebrand Google Play to YouTube Music.

everybodyknows 3y ago
> lost my wedding playlist It's the new industry normal. Amazon Prime Music zeroed out all user's investment of time spent crafting playlists, five months back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33521374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33521374
esalman 3y ago
I have used Google products for free all my life. In last year or so I was forced to pay for two products - one is my wife's Google Fi phone and another is a friend's Google apps suite. Both of these are ticking time bombs. These are like sensitive data that you haven't backed up. Might end in catastrophe any time. My wife's contract should be up sometime next year and that's when she'll switch to a different carrier. I also might migrate from Google apps by the end of next month.
climb_stealth 3y ago
Man, don't even say that! I'm seriously worried about Google Photos going away. I'm running Ente in parallel but it just isn't there yet. Especially on iOS.
JohnFen 3y ago
A good reminder that any of your data that exists solely in the cloud is at risk. If you're into using the cloud to store stuff, be sure to keep a copy of that stuff locally as well.

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago

In this thread: people invest time into a free product and then complain that they get rugged.

cowsandmilk 3y ago
How are the devices Google is selling “free”? The backend services supporting them were bundled as features of the device and are part of why people paid money for the devices.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  Did I say devices? Or did I say products?

xchip 3y ago

yeah, another half-ass solution were the business model is to monitor you as much as possible by offering as less as possible

31337Logic 3y ago

Thank you, Google, for dropping support on your OnHub products. I was able to pick up a few, cheaply, from your angry users. I haven't bought a single home device from Google and have no desire to. But Google's utter lack of direction in this department means I now have 3 decent pieces of hardware running OpenWRT. Thanks again! ;-)

eimrine 3y ago

> I believe in a future where homes are connected, smarter, and automated enough not to require switches (...) An average switch can work probably more than an average human, not requires any king-for-a-day with their blessed updates and even continues to work when the supplier stops his business. This article maybe should be not about Google but about any IoT because you can do all kinds of automatization with the power supply to your 120V/230V stuff just on your DIN rail on your switchboard and you know what? Stuff on DIN rail will continue its work even if your counry will be invaded by Ruscists with problems such as rolling blackouts, bad Internet connection, or if your location considered to be under some embargo, or even if the master of the home has been killed and somebody (such as certified electrician) must to figure out how this automatization works (I mean that no electrician can do anything to your switchboard if there are no switches). > The aforementioned update on the Lenovo Smart Display nerfed the one thing I used it most for — streaming web video content in the kitchen. Why to use this walled-garden approach? You can use use any upto 15yo laptop on x86 architecture with some free and open source OS, or you can use any non-Smart display with Raspberry-like computer which obviously is going to serve you as long as Raspberry's video coprocessor will keep supporting actual Youtube's video codec. > I struggle to understand what Google is thinking; the upgrade cycle for a security system should be measured in ten-plus years, if not more. What an ugly lie! Security systems should be shaped in such a way that no guy except you has an access to a root.

DocTomoe 3y ago
> You can use use any upto 15yo laptop on x86 architecture with some free and open source OS, or you can use any non-Smart display with Raspberry-like computer which obviously is going to serve you as long as Raspberry's video coprocessor will keep supporting actual Youtube's video codec. Which is all nice and cool as long as only tech geeks live in a household. The moment you are trying to make an aesthetically pleasing home, old monitors and green electronics boards are a no-go.
- eimrine 3y ago
  This is a battle of aesthetically-looking stuff but not yours vs long-living stuff but having wires and boards everywhere. Former has some aestetics on surfare level but malware on deep levels. Latter looks like crap but has some aestetics on deep level. Everybody has his deepness of sensivity to aestetics.

nickpeterson 3y ago

I’d haven’t really considered this angle, but if ChatGPT is an existential threat to Google search, we’re probably going to see signs that Google is ignoring even more if these side projects.

doctor_eval 3y ago
All these dead products could have been creating a revenue moat against the fall of ad revenue and the onset of a competitor. But they pissed away decades of innovation through poor product management, bad incentives, and such hubris like the world has never seen. We’re seeing Google reap what they have sowed. What a waste.

account-5 3y ago

This sort of shit is the reason they will never get me to use their passkey implementation. The sooner there's a truly portable open source offline version of passkeys I'm all in. Until then I'm sticking with my password manager. I do feel the only thing you can really trust from Google are the things that make them money. Chrome, and any software that allows them to hook into for advertising money. It makes me worry about go, dart, and flutter. Though the latter two include analytics which you need to disable.

ssbash 3y ago
I believe security keys are the offline version of passkeys you're looking for. I am afraid that websites will somehow disable support security keys and only support passkey implementations from big tech (similar to how websites only offer signin with google, fb , etc). Can someone clarify if WebAuthn protocol allows for this filtering against hardware authenticators?
- blibble 3y ago
  yes, there's an attestation cert as part of the register request
  - pabs3 3y ago
    I hear that the way Big Tech implements passkeys means that it is impossible to require attestation to prove use of their implementations.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right, but I think it’s not all bad to only use auth from big tech - I don’t know if I trust most small companies to implement uname/password auth correctly. Most users recycle passwords too so a leak is really bad. I think the reason to only support big tech passkey auth is because users (at scale) can’t be trusted to keep track of their hardware keys.
pabs3 3y ago

anon050723 3y ago

I've been really happy with a Hubitat Elevation[1], controlling misc z-wave and zigbee devices. I've had mine for over three years and it continues to get updates[2]. Nearly every device I've considered has had either a provided or community written driver[3] available. 1: https://hubitat.com/ https://hubitat.com/ 2: https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-2-3-5-available/113395 https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-2-3-5-available/1133... 3: https://community.hubitat.com/t/custom-device-drivers-wiki https://community.hubitat.com/t/custom-device-drivers-wiki

phantomics 3y ago

You either die an innovator, or you live long enough to see yourself become a Yahoo.

nbzso 3y ago

The biggest unanswered question for me in recent years is how educated people with a tech background have trusted a big corporation which publicly stated years ago that they existence goal is to build the digital GOD (AGI). It's beyond my imagination. The same with OpenAI craze now. Why I would give my personal or corporate information to them or Microsoft? To learn more about my process patterns and RLHF their models for free? I understand the normies, they have no clue. But this?

eimrine 3y ago
There is a good article [1] just has been spawned on "New", maybe it answers your question. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35850843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35850843
meindnoch 3y ago
Maybe "educated people with a tech background" aren't as intelligent as you thought?
- nbzso 3y ago
  Uncomfortably, after leading several teams I lean to this direction, but I never forget that I am biased too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

SergeAx 3y ago

I love this approach. While the device is in use - it is ours, and you cannot open, repair, modify it of its firmware. When we discontinue it - it is your problem, we got your money, end of story.

vachina 3y ago

I think a good rule of thumb is not investing in any hardware which has its functionality depend on someone else’s RPC endpoint, especially for something as trivial as switching things on and off.

Barrin92 3y ago

The Google specific issues aside I wonder if the average smart-home enthusiast will ever make 10% of the money and time back they apparently invest into their smart homes. To me this isn't really about a single company, it's about shoving so much tech into your home that barely does anything it's no wonder something always breaks. How many years of uninterrupted light switch pressing do you need to do before this actually pays off?

nologic01 3y ago

I read 'smart phone' instead of 'smart home' and for a brief blissful moment I thought, wow, what did I miss? Is this the year of the linux phone? Old enough to live perfectly well without a smart home but alas young enough so impossible to live without a smart phone.

jacooper 3y ago

> Step by step, my goal is to build out an entirely self-hosted ecosystem. The only viable way.

chkaloon 3y ago

Home Assistant. Definitely DIY, but works great

Saris 3y ago

Everyone should be wary of anything google (or really any company) makes, and ask yourself "what happens when they stop supporting this". Their phones are fine, those are easily flashed with many other ROMs. But anything locked down like smart home stuff should be avoided. Same with any online services that don't easily support data export to something else.

benknight87 3y ago

This doesn't even mention the fact that even 7 years in, the UX is a daily nightmare, for me at least. * My speakers randomly don't show up as options when casting * With two speakers in my house, they often both answer at the same time or one of them waits a few seconds and says something went wrong * Bluetooth randomly stops working sometimes and requires a power cycle. The list goes on.

ikesau 3y ago

There's an uncanny SEO-optimizing style to this article. Reminds me of this scene from Return of the Killer Tomatoes https://youtu.be/pXzsYIBVUB0?t=3841 https://youtu.be/pXzsYIBVUB0?t=3841

pavel_lishin 3y ago
Yeah, it feels like the whole thing could have been two paragraphs. And why is there a poll at the start?

kderbyma 3y ago

Google will be dead soon. They will need a to resurrect something besides an inanimate corpse.....But again. HR doesn't care...neither does anyone who hires anyone...and most of all...neither do the execs. it's a dying horse they are trying to ride into town....

snthd 3y ago

Google don't make smart home products, they make cloud home products.

Aeolun 3y ago

These days I find it really hard to not immediately respond with ‘I dunno what you expected to happen’. Is there someone still building anything that relies on a given Google service still being around and working in a year?

rch 3y ago

Something about Google's incentive structure is eating them alive. For instance, there's an alarm setting on Android (Pixel) for "Night Mode: Very dim display (for dark rooms)". Which I interpret as a Googler's way of saying: "my bonus is tied to minutes of display visibility while charging, so F users there's no way to turn the display off."

maxerickson 3y ago
On my Pixel, there's a "Keep the Screen Dark" in the digital well being settings. It's nested 4 screens in or whatever, but it's there. Going from an older device to a Pixel 6, I would say that there is some additional complexity in the settings, but directionally, the changes make the device nicer to use. So like the setting in the alarm isn't the overall device control, it's deep in the digital well being settings (complexity), but there is a way to set the phone to be less disruptive, with quite a bit of control (directionally correct).
- rch 3y ago
  I had used an option like that, until about 6 months ago IIRC. It's gone now. However I've just found something under Settings - Accessibility that might mitigate the problem a little more. Extra dim: dim screen beyond your phone's minimum brightness. It still won't really be off though, most likely. And the text labels on these settings belong in a Monty Python sketch about product management.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    Preface: I’m an iPhone user, but I’m kinda confused what you’re trying to achieve that can’t be had with just pressing the physical button the phone to turn off the screen. Does the screen need to be on for the alarm to work?
    - rch 3y ago
      To clarify: the issue is that the screen stays illuminated when charging on the stand. Pressing the physical button used to work, even with the current oddball settings. It only stopped being effective a few weeks ago, when using a wireless charging stand. It still works when I switch back to USB charging. Presumably because it would be too easy to simply place the phone face down, effectively revealing user preference.

linsomniac 3y ago

My primary use of the Home speakers is playing music in the shower. That experience is actually pretty bad though, over the years between google music and spotify, getting it to play my music is just horribly obtuse. I can't reliably get it to start my music. "Playing a playlist called my favorites" or similar rather than playing my own playlist. At one point after 3-4 failed attempts like this I said "F you" and the speaker said "Don't speak to me like that." So I unplugged it.

devoutsalsa 3y ago
I still want profanity mode. Hurling insults at a Google Assistant and having to roast me in return would be amazing.
- linsomniac 3y ago
  That's not really what I'm looking for, of course. At the time it was feeling a bit like "3 times is enemy action". A person, if I had asked them to play my playlist and they put on "KidzBopz" or other "decidedly not my playlists", they'd be like "Ok, I've pushed this gag far enough." But seriously, I still haven't plugged that thing back in, it's been over a year. The only reliable way I could get to start my playlists was to use my phone, at which point I might as well just be using a bluetooth speaker, which is what I've been doing the last year.
- LightBug1 3y ago
  "Fuck you, Dave. Fuuuuuuuck you!!!!! You and your shitty little ReVanced app" That would be pretty awesome.
- lodovic 3y ago
  It should not respond like with "don't talk to me like that". It is a device, not a person, it has no feelings, and it is being used in a private home. No reason to police speech there.
  - throwwwaway69 3y ago

tacocataco 3y ago

I feel like if a product is abandoned it should become freeware for all to use so the electronic devices involved have a less of a chance to become ewaste. Kind of how copyright (was supposed to) work, giving access to the public eventually.

surajrmal 3y ago
Unfortunately it's often not entirely up to the company to decide. They likely use components and software written by various other companies which require strict controls over who may have access to it. The nature of those contracts would have to change first.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  It should be easy to pass a law that makes all these contracts null and void. The end-users' rights should be supreme. If the companies making components don't like this, they should be more careful about who they sell components to.

erocs 3y ago

If this isn't a straightforward anti-competitive lawsuit I don't know what would be.

GrumpyNl 3y ago

I had to, manually, disable over 50 cookies on that site, crazy.

fencepost 3y ago

The only thing Google can be depended on to do with lower volume products and services is kill them. The same seems to apply to services with no way to run ads. I'm kind of amazed that Google Voice is still around, though at this point it may be tied in with Google Fi and letting them lean on each other.

chaostheory 3y ago

For me this feeling happened after they killed Nest Secure

coldtea 3y ago

Pro tip: unless you have some handicaps and need the extra automation, don't invest in any "smart home" ecosystem. They are dumb, and more trouble than worth it.

riemannzeta 3y ago

Their position in the Sonos lawsuits is looking pretty stubborn and selfish at this point. Just pay for a license rather than inconveniencing your customers. They should be working together rather than fighting over a royalty that's relatively small to Google and huge to Sonos. Seems stupid to me.

riemannzeta 3y ago

The ultimate question for consumers though is this: Are you better off in the Apple ecosystem? As bad as things are with Google, the answer is probably no. But not many have the time, tools, and training to be independent of either.

WA 3y ago
So far, the answer actually seems to be yes. But maybe you can clarify your metric by which you measure "better off".
Larrikin 3y ago
You are not better off in one walled garden over the other. With greedy corporations in the US pushing subscriptions for products that get discontinued and China spinning up cheap crap companies everyday, there is zero reason to invest in anything IoT in your home that is not fully open sourced or completely cracked. Currently the best indicator is checking Home assistant's or ESPHome's integrations. I'm a little worried that they are guided by one company, Nabu Casa, but atleast the product is open source so the community can take over if they pull an OpenAI and completely reverse. They cater to a very combative group of customers that will absolutely take over the product if they get greedy.
microtonal 3y ago
I dug out an old Airport Extreme when a Fritz!Box at the office had some issues. It worked fine as ever and even better, there was even a security update waiting. The device is from 2013. The third generation Apple TV from 2012 had 120 months of updates (the last update was Apple TV Software 7.9 in March 2022). So at the very least it sounds like they are doing pretty ok.

michelledepeil 3y ago

This is, imo, not a google-problem, but a non-FLOSS problem.

gumby 3y ago

FTA: > “Google’s directionless approach” This phrase has applied to all parts of google since the departure of Schmidt. I used to think it was a shame, but eventually realized we’ve been lucky.

cfeduke 3y ago

Google has done the same thing to Nest Secure. I removed an ADT system from my office because the monthly monitoring from ADT was $39.99 - the ADT system came with the office. I installed the Nest Secure cameras and system myself, even running USB power outside the office through the masonry. The monitoring was adequate - notifications sent to my phone - and Internet storage pricing was acceptable. But as of April 2024 the service is being shut down and I can opt to have an ADT system installed - a $485 value! - and pay a monthly monitoring fee. (Or I can receive a $200 credit on the Google store, presumably to buy some other technology they are going to sunset.)

Corrado 3y ago
Yea, the Google store credit really feels like a slap in the face. "Hey, if you liked the old thing that we took away you should purchase the new thing that we'll take away."

mulmen 3y ago

Why would anyone have trusted Google on this in the first place? It’s such an obvious outcome I struggle to understand how anyone expected anything different. This is why we have open standards and interoperability. Imagine if you can only buy lamps from IKEA because your whole house has proprietary outlets. Who signs up for that?

devoutsalsa 3y ago
People in the 60s: the government will wiretap your home. People now: hey wire tap, can cats eat pancakes?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  I remember when discussions about surveillance involved obscure facts about the actual construction of an ancient device called a "pen register." Now you're a Russian spy if you don't think the CIA should be placing employees in the C-suites of all communications companies. The amount of control and surveillance we inflicted on the children of the 90s has become the new expectation for adult citizens.

sagarpatil 3y ago

Alexa isn’t any better either. I had Alexa’s in each room and when I used to ask her to start the AC, it would start AC in some other room (this is after assigning the Alexa and AC to that particular room). That right there is a deal breaker for me, I can’t keep telling my guests every time what’s the room called and have them remember it.

Corrado 3y ago
Alexa is weird this way. It has the ability to assign things to certain areas, it's just hard to figure out how to make it happen. For example, I have Alexa controlled lights in my basement and it knows what to turn on when I say "Turn on the lights" while in my basement. I also have Alexa controlled lights in my garage, and until recently I specifically had to tell it "Turn on the garage lights" while standing in my garage. However, I made a change recently (I can't remember what it was) and now my garage auto-magically knows that I'm talking about it's lights while I'm in the garage. So, I think Alexa has the ability to know which A/C unit your talking about while standing in the room, but it's not clear how to make it happen. Also, it sometimes stops working, even after you have it configured correctly; that's the real frustrating part!
- grrdotcloud 3y ago
  Every device in each room has a different trigger wake word. That eliminated them being triggered by proximity. Then each smart device has a unique name based upon their function. Dog names or primary user. Echo/Computer/Alexia, turn on Fido (outdoor lights) Pairing by voice is also helpful.

kkfx 3y ago

Two notes: - only open standard design can operate together with not-too-much issues; - actual state of home automation is a directionless mess. About the first point: the most common protocol for "smart devices"/home appliances, those who can actually talk to something else regardless of the vendor is ModBUS, a serial protocol from the '70s. The newer MQTT, Kafka etc are very rarely supported on commercial devices. Long story short: the sole way we can get different tools from different OEMs playing together is that such interoperability is mandatory by law, carefully tested, with sanctions when found absent. Without that NO OEM will really be interoperable with anything, it's own products together included. For the second point: MOST home automation is just about flipping switches with some logic behind, the rest is just monitoring. A VERY SIMPLE THING, unfortunately almost no vendor and perhaps also most designers have no clue about how and what to automate. Even the more expensive and trendy tools, like p.v. systems to be potentially integrated with car charging systems etc aren't really integrated even under a single OEM umbrella. Essentially: just invest in home automation if you really want to do something and be prepared to long frustration, high costs and unreliable, fragile stuff.

erickf1 3y ago

I stopped using Google products a long time ago. Seeing articles like this and hearing what others are dealing with just encourages me to see that I made the right choice.

einpoklum 3y ago

I'm never lending money to Bernie Madoff again!

Animats 3y ago

If your Google account is cancelled, do you freeze in the dark?

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

Reminder that Google is an ad company with a large number of hobbies. You cannot trust Google to continue doing anything that doesn’t generate (directly or indirectly) substantial ad revenue.

opmelogy 3y ago

Google has a history of killing off products that are actively used by people. The trust is broken at this point. I'm super weary of relying on Google for anything now.

allenrb 3y ago

How can it not be obvious by now that if you want to control the experience, you need to own and control the hardware and software? Why would anyone ever trust anything else to remain stable over the long term?

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Let's be fair to a small degree: Every goddamn "smarthome" vendor is doing fake open, embrace and extend, partial protocol, hidden preference for its hardware, scummy foot dragging on good standards. It's just that Google adds completely rudderless leadership, its world famous utter disregard for customer support, and complete lack of commitment to the recipe.

ouid 3y ago

because its dumb to put a computer whose behavior you cannot check and which regularly receives "updates" in charge of something that couldn't even be called an inconvenience before, like walking to the thermostat or flipping a lightswitch?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pers0n 3y ago

What happens when your smart device is 7-15+yrs old and isnt supported by anything anymore?

phendrenad2 3y ago

I moved off of all Google services years ago, when people were taking to Twitter and Hacker News to get support for their randomly banned GMail accounts. At that point it was already clear that Google only cares about maintaining their google/youtube/advertising dominance at all costs, and their other products only exist to confuse competitors. I'd like to run some services on Google Cloud someday, because it looks like they have a nice cloud offering, but I won't touch it because of this.

rektide 3y ago

This is just what corporatism is. Directionless ever shifting Objectives and Key Results (OKR) and forever chasing the New Addressable Market (NAM). There's plenty of believers & folks fighting for causes, but no real overall motivation for long term excellence, for building a future. No vision & no one in charge & no persistence. Organizations are made of people, and over time and as they shift & scale, they lose direction purpose & caring, they lack the filter & will & cohesion to follow through, to tend to the affairs they set in motion. Sectors of companies rise and fall with the tides. Google really is one of the saddest cases on the planet today. They arose from the web, from interconnectivity. They had great APIs that allowed new things to be built. And you'd think IoT/smarthome would be a perfect venue to deploy this genetic advantage, to build great apis, to help arise a new backbone of possibility. But Google has gotten worse and worse and worse at opening possibilities. G+ social network never got an API. Google smart home had a meager set of APIs and it's mostly shrunk in capabilities over time (conversely, they did (finally) land some local network apis capabilities a few years back). We're in a sad age, where security & assurability trumps possibility; Google is trying to restrict & clamp down & remove app stores, rather than enable broader possibilities. A scared company is not fun to watch.

windex 3y ago

Never trust google products, I will never forget losing google reader.

fennecfoxy 3y ago

I agree, I went all in on nest hubs/minis etc to have assistant for making requests to control stuff. I've got a bunch of Xiaomi and custom sensors and other devices hooked up to home assistant with a relay through to Google (that I've had to pay for...because Google's home ecosystem is just fucking terrible, anybody could do better with their eyes closed). I've noticed over time that assistant has become much dumber, is prone to misunderstanding what you say, Google sucks at hardware their wifi antennas are total crap, any minor latency between multiple assistant devices will result in them all trying to respond rather than the closest one, it's just a nightmare. I haven't done any personal projects in a long time but I think it's about time I start playing with the OpenAI apis + whisper and see if I can't build a better assistant.

fennecfoxy 3y ago
Aha, as a follow-up this conveniently appeared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rIvB3LZiKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rIvB3LZiKA but still not to the degree I want. Hmmm, time to get started.

Friedduck 3y ago

I’ll add my lament. We use nest cameras, a nest thermostat and google WiFi. As part of their recent forced account merge our WiFi controls no longer work. Their apps are buggy and freeze-prone, and ironically continually trying to sell more product when the existing ones don’t work well. I’m regrettably having to replace everything to get off this treadmill. Lesson learned.