11 ms·

Google keeps failing its Nest customers

198 points by hnburnsy 3y ago

sturza 3y ago
> This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Same thing's happening to Gmail.
- nikanj 3y ago
  Usually Google products get cancelled before they become useless piles of shit. Not sure how that's better
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The reality is that 90% of Google product dysfunction can be explained by the phrase: "shipping the org chart" not by any particular $$-related malice. Inter-product-area rivalries/competitions/dysfunctions. Product manager attention span problems. High ego, high-status engineers with nice new technological hammers (e.g. Flutter, Fuchsia, Dart) that absolutely need to find nails, so go take other people's projects to rewrite. Working in Home / Nest PA was very trying on the patience. They were bad for it, but the problem is endemic to anything user-facing at Google (see also Play Music vs YouTube Music, ChromeOS vs Android, Android Things, etc. etc.)
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    Yep. People used to make fun of Microsoft for their org chart where devdiv was holding a gun to everyone threatening to set fire to the building if Win32 was ever touched, but at least it was between massive orgs within a single massive org. Google has a bunch of managers all vying to get their own promotions and will not hesitate to fuck over both users and other teams just for their moment of glory at Google I/O. And all of this stems from the fact that there's no leadership at Google, with an absolute inability to rally troops together on a single, common goal.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      The problem at its root is despite this stuff being the major external public appearance of Google, it is in fact all just a side show to the real Google -- which is all data centre hosted core services stuff doing ads, search, etc. Behind all that stuff is an incredibly competent smart SRE team keeping the lights on and keeping things very efficient and reliable. And some boring but diligent SWEs writing the rather boring code to do all that boring stuff. That's what the real Google is, but it's invisible to the public. But all that ads money needs to be spent somewhere. And you can't grow your staff forever doing "boring" stuff. And if there's an exciting interesting project inside Google it's flies to shit, people stepping over each other for promotion.
      - BlueTemplar 3y ago
        It's indirectly noticeable by YouTube not having gone out of business despite a free model with high costs. Note also how its biggest competitor, Twitch, is owned by another data center giant : Amazon (AWS).
        mschuster91 3y ago
        The only way YouTube and Twitch can stay in business is because their respective owners have the scale to demand massive, massive peering discounts from "last-mile" ISPs and, at least in the case of Google, can avoid middle men on the intercontinental fiber links as they simply have their own cables where they don't need to pay rents to anyone.
        pas 3y ago
        YouTube has a lot of ads nowadays. Of course it can do that because it's in a quasi-monopolistic position, which is a direct result of Google cross-financing it from search ads revenue. (Similarly how Chrome got into its own position.)
    - lynx23 3y ago
      Since I read about Amanda Rosenberg, I am not surprised anymore. Actually, I am glad YouTube is the only Google product that I am using.
  - achow 3y ago
    > "shipping the org chart" It is science :-) Conway's law: ..complex products end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. The law is applied primarily in the field of software architecture, though Conway directed it more broadly and its assumptions and conclusions apply to most technical fields. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
    - pas 3y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY&t=34m12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY&t=34m12s (one of the best illustrations, using Windows volume control components)
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      All the Conway's law says is that it's a top management failure.
  - m463 3y ago
    Friends who worked for google seemed to be rewarded for new groundbreaking stuff, but were penalized for maintenance or saving money or anything having to do with the present. but "shipping the org chart" really explains a lot of tech good and bad. When sj was at apple, product was well-integrated software and hardware (as he ruled the org chart, which left no space for rivalries and fiefdoms) with every sh*tty iot device that phones home, marketing in the org chart makes for a monetized, not-private mess for customers.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      It seemed like Jobs at Apple and Gates at Microsoft avoided a huge amount of organizational bullshit via a technical fleet-in-being doctrine. [0] Even if their time and attention were finite, they inspired a credible worry throughout the company that they might suprisingly appear and demand answers on why a team is @$&@ing up tech / UX, as PMs/VPs rightly asked themselves "Do I want to be explaining my behavior to X?" Which seemed to tamp down on the amount of inter-fiefdom rivalries and wasted time. I don't get the impression many people are worried about Pichai breathing tech/ UX fire from on high in the same way. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        I think it's that what Microsoft had in the 90s and what Apple had in the 2010s (and to some degree now) was an existential clear mission. Forking off into idiocy was obviously discouraged by leadership but also the profit and survival and success motive was clear: ship improved iPhones and make revenue on them, improve and ship Office or Windows, etc. That's the source of revenue, that's the clear mission. Google's consumer products lack that. Google has an ad machine that just produces seemingly infinite cash. The hardware and consumer facing stuff is a sideshow. So it escapes project discipline.
        3y ago
  - toss1 3y ago
    Sounds reasonably accurate. And what is obviously missing from this scenario is anyone in the Google organization that has the slightest care or concern for any customer need. Also strongly correlates with their obvious zero customer support / you-re-on-your-own practices. The entire company is just "what can we foist off on them this week?".
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Where is this quote from? It's not in the article.
  - chrisbolt 3y ago
    This recent article by Cory Doctorow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35863876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35863876
saagarjha 3y ago
Here's hoping, but Nest was hit hard by layoffs this year :(
charles_f 3y ago
I will invest money in equipment operated by Google. While in general it's not great to rely on a backend service, additionally so when it comes to privacy and Google, on top of that Google has this habit of killing products without consideration for their customer base that I find unsettling.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Did you men to write > I will not invest money in equipment operated by Google. ? Because what you have now seems inconsistent.
  - charles_f 3y ago
    Woopsy, yes
- NickHoff 3y ago
  I spent a while trying to find the 'but' in that sentence. I assume you meant 'not'. :)
quattrofan 3y ago
[dead]
rasz 3y ago
[flagged]
- izacus 3y ago
  Some deep wisdom here that we've never heard before. Thank you for your contribution.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    When you read something wise and learn something, it's not the wisdom. You're the wisdom.
- pkulak 3y ago
  They have a Matter-enabled thermostat. If that can integrate into Home Assistant without an internet connection (which should be the case), you are absolutely not “the product” for buying one. You’re just buying the best locally-controlled thermostat you can.
izacus 3y ago
Well, Fuchsia team that drives the OS on Nest devices were hit heavily by the layoffs[0], so I guess those lazy coasters won't be able to fix your problems anymore. [0]: https://9to5google.com/2023/01/21/fuchsia-area-120-google-layoffs/ https://9to5google.com/2023/01/21/fuchsia-area-120-google-la...
- cjkarr 3y ago
  Might be a net improvement, as the quality of the devices was headed downward even when the organization was fully staffed. I'd be content for the devices to be left alone in stasis instead of having someone tinker with something and break it, just as they made reliable Bluetooth connectivity that I used to take for granted into a daily exercise in frustration.
pkulak 3y ago
I remember years ago when Google I/O and Apple’s equivalent felt like the Super Bowl. Now I don’t even know when they are or really care. I miss those days.
- nikanj 3y ago
  The Google I/O announcements for year n: 1) New build system for Android, because https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ 2) Security architectural changes that patch theoretical issues of the 7th dimension, and mess up all existing apps unless the developer rewrites 80% of the codebase 3) Pixel n+1 with more mega-everything (megapixels, megabytes of memory, megahertz per cpu, etc)
  - lostdog 3y ago
    Maybe the will follow up removing the headphone jack from the Pixel with an equally-stupid removal of the whole screen.
  - gcatalfamo 3y ago
    I already knew what xkcd was linked, before opening it.
    - RealStickman_ 3y ago
      There's an xkcd for everything, but only 5 or so are linked regularly.
      - prepend 3y ago
        I’m surprised Munroe hasn’t made a meta xkcd about this phenomenon. I expect the top linked ones are: this, the single package holding up the internet, when to automate, git commands, and ???
        hyperdimension 3y ago
        The 5$ wrench "cryptography attack" one and the spacebar heating up change one are two I see regularly here.
Nursie 3y ago
Said it last week but I’ll say again - they lost me when they made Google domains accounts unable to use the system. Massively unfriendly move.
kenhwang 3y ago
My Nest camera is pretty hilariously bad as well. It literally just watches my mailbox and the path to it, and 90% of the time, my mailman is able to sneak past it without setting off the motion detection. They're literally in frame and just walking for 10-20s but that's not enough to register as motion even on the highest sensitivity. The Ring with a similar vantage point detects it every time.
- rantee 3y ago
  I've heard similar stories from others. My Nest doorbell has issues, too, unless someone is right on the porch. I'm ready to get cameras but waiting for the next Prime Day when I can probably pick up two Rings for the price of one Nest cam (and maybe even a previous gen doorbell?). The multi-app thing, as most others have noted, is also infuriating and pathetic at this point. Not OK, Google.
disillusioned 3y ago
Google has spent nearly the last decade completely ruining any goodwill Nest had established through a comedy of errors and sheer, wanton incompetence. It's absolutely breathtaking how bad Google is at shipping functioning software. I don't know how Rick Osterloh or Rishi Chandra still have jobs, but they should answer for the following litany of catastrophic product decisions: * Google decides to abandon Nest as a separate, highly-prized brand and product line, and instead bring everything under the Google Home umbrella. This process is excruciating and a monumental, half-decade-long failure. It is the very definition of a legacy rewrite pattern gone awry, but coupled with billions of dollars of purchased, installed hardware in people's actual homes. * This starts with the "force Nest users to have a Google account to use Nest" and "Googlekill Works With Nest" decisions. Google decides to gate certain features and to encourage people to upgrade to the Google Home implementation of the Nest functionality, but completely left feature parity a decade behind. To wit, Google Home's app, beyond being buggy, also can't do basic things like allow for easy scrubbing of video feeds, or control of the Nest Protect smoke detectors. * Google also willfully murders Works With Nest, and kills with it the goodwill of hundreds of manufacturers who were pretty excited to build compatible products and services. This is migrated to a Works with Google/Assistant product that... again, completely lacks parity. They break the Home/Away functionality entirely. They delay this process a bit, and Works with Google catches up in some ways, but it takes literal years. * Google releases a new line of Nest Cams that... don't work with the Nest app. Indeed, you have to activate them in the Google Home app, and their feeds will not display in the Nest app. From a Product Manager perspective, this is very easy to back into: Google is on a slow, death-march termination of the Nest app, in favor of migrating to Google Home. Rather than building any new functionality into the Nest app (these new cams included battery and floodlight functions, for example), they decided it made more sense to force users to use the Google Home app. Except... the Google Home app STILL lacks parity with the now-8-year-old Nest app. The Google Home app, as of May the 8th in the year of our lord 2023, does not support the fantastic SightView video scrubbing functionality. Or, as it happens, ANY scrubbing functionality. It doesn't support the ability to generate and download video clips. And the web version, which has been in a public preview for over a year, STILL doesn't support the ability to even view the pre-tagged movement sessions that you can view in the mobile app. But to say this again: new Nest Cam users cannot view 100% of the video recorded by the Nest Cams. It is functionally impossible and completely ridiculous, considering the Dropcam/earlier Nest Cams have been able to do this for literally a decade. * Beyond that sheer lunacy, Rick Osterloh gets up on stage and has the temerity to announce with a big dumb grin on his face the Nest Doorbell: the "upgrade" (in literally no metric) from the older Nest Hello. This product has two variants: a wired and battery powered version, for people who don't have doorbell wiring. The wired product manages to ship into end users' hands with a curious limitation: even when wired, the product is INCAPABLE of recording 24-hour footage. Note that the Nest Hello, launched in 2017, supported this functionality out of the box and still does. When pressed for a reason, Rick says that the thermals were a limitation, coupled with how thin they wanted to make the product. I'll say this again slowly: for some reason, a Product Manager at Google thought that the THINNESS of a PERMANENTLY INSTALLED, FIXED LOCATION VIDEO DOORBELL was more important than its ability to actually record video reliably. How on earth do these people still have jobs? * Which brings us to two weeks ago. Google had already announced back in 2020 that they were killing the brilliantly designed, beautiful, extremely functional, nearly perfect Nest Secure alarm system. They stopped selling it, and then sunk $450M of money into ADT for... literally what reason, no one on planet earth can say. At the time, they announced they'd continue to support the Nest Secure. Well, that's no longer compatible with their designs to migrate people to the Google Home app, or to return their boondoggle style investment in ADT, so two weeks ago, Google announced that they'll be bricking every single person's Nest Secure, along with their (also) brilliantly designed hybrid Nest Detects: their combination motion and door open sensors, which _also_ feature a muting button and little nightlight. These things are a wonder of design, and still function perfect, and Google has decided to literally pull the plug and create an entire mountain of e-waste for the hell of it. They're offering users a free ADT system, which includes an ENORMOUS hub that is literally 5 times the size of the Nest Guard hub, and two motion and door sensors. That's it. There are users who spent hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Google's Nest Secure hardware, buying additional Nest Detect sensors, and they're all going into the trash now and literally no one knows why. Worse, the new product is markedly worse in every way. The ADT Hub is ENORMOUS. It has no business being this big. It does literally everything the Nest Guard does, but the Nest Guard is 1/5th the size, and tastefully designed. This thing looks like one of those massive cable modem/wireless router hybrids, except it's also your keypad for disarming your system. Gross. (Nest Guard crammed in battery backup, wifi, Nest Thread, cellular backup, a voice speaker, and an alarm siren into a very tasteful package.) Beyond that, Nest is also inherently stripping another piece of brilliant design for NO REASON: The Nest x Yale door lock (which I have three of in my house) currently unlocks my door AND disarms my security system automatically when I get home. It's hard to describe how amazing this functionality is. There is absolutely no indication that there will be any way to get the replacement ADT system to disarm from the door lock, even though Google has floated this idea of "Routines" (and a script engine) for over a year , with nothing to show for it. So in a year, I'll literally have to throw away my perfectly good Nest Guard and Nest Detects. I'm creating e-waste. I'll be replacing them with an uglier system with more parts and less functionality. How is this a win, Google? If I strip out the most cynical view of what's happening here (Google wanting to amp up sales of the ADT product they've invested in, but maybe not, because, again, they're actually giving these things away for free to Nest Secure users, so ostensibly losing money here), I can again understand how they came to such a hamfisted decision: they don't want to migrate the Nest Secure functionality into the Google Home app, and they signed a dumb agreement with ADT to sunset it. But once again, Google chooses to ignore the reputational damage and damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. They'll brick your perfectly functional hardware and make you downgrade to the newer, shittier model. And no one over there has the power to stop it? What the hell is Sundar doing over there, other than firing people and cashing insanely fat bonus checks? Meanwhile, Google also: * Migrated the Google Home Hubs away from legacy Linux OS to Fuschia, and then promptly murdered the Thread functionality that the locks and thermostat work with, removing a mesh network component * Still hasn't released a video scrubber for their new cameras. I cannot conceive of how this has taken them so long. This is the same company that owns YouTube, YouTubeTV, and... checks notes... the existing, already functional Nest app that does exactly what we want * Is ALSO killing old legacy Dropcams. More e-waste. These cameras work just fine, but Google is murdering them anyway. They're shipping you a replacement if you're an active Nest Aware subscriber, but only for up to two cameras. * Is NOT offering ANY compensation AT ALL for Nest Secure users outside of the US. They're just willfully destroying your $400-$1500+ investment for the hell of it. * Claims to be environmentally minded but generates e-waste with these deprecations. Google should take a page out of Sonos's book, when they caught the unholy backlash for their equally stupid idea of bricking legacy Sonos products: spin them out to a legacy app. Or build a connector, or open-source the firmware, or rewrite the firmware to even work with ADT. There are so many options that could be pursued in the year they've given us before they murder this thing. You would think a literal trillion dollar company could find their way here, but time and time again, Google proves that they don't know how to release hardware with a cohesive strategy. It's all spray and pray, and it's ridiculous. * Oh, and they're doing all sorts of stupid stuff with FitBit too, but I won't even get into that. How. Do. These. People. Still. Have. Jobs. There. How do they expect to ever be trusted by anyone again? How do they think this is a good or right call, and why is no one speaking up and advocating for their USERS? I'm genuinely asking. I don't work there, I don't understand how something like this happens.
tomsmeding 3y ago
People I know well recently decided to buy some Nest products, so I was very interested to read this article. But I was disappointed to find that the article has basically zero content? It just seems to... end without actually saying anything beyond "Google bad". In what specific ways has Google failed its customers with Nest products? Is it just the app (the only thing mentioned in the article)?
lysozyme 3y ago
Nest still sends me a monthly summary email for account that’s maybe nine years stale, despite my repeated attempts to get them to stop. Their customer support says there’s “nothing they can do”. The Nest smoke alarms at a friend’s house say (as in play over the speakers a voice saying) “Remote access attempt detected” every so often while we’re sitting in the living room. At least twice a year they go off in the middle of the night (without smoke). So I guess when you’re contacting customers who don’t want it, and your alarms wrongly sound, I would say you have a problem with your false positive rate
- borski 3y ago
  I mean - have you sniffed the network traffic to see if anyone is trying to remotely access the Nest Protect? :)
- darkwater 3y ago
  I would have tore them off the first time they went off in a false alarm.
  - wffurr 3y ago
    You must not have any smoke alarms at all, then. Every smoke alarm in every place I’ve ever lived has had false alarms. I hate smoke detectors so much. The manufacturers are too scared of liability to consider that smoke alarms only work if they’re plugged in and the alarms can be trusted. If you unplug the smoke alarms due to false alarms, then all the liability is on you, not the manufacturer. I’d happily pay a premium for smoke alarms less prone to false alarms, but none such exist as far as I can tell.
    - distances 3y ago
      For what it's worth, I have never had a false smoke alarm. Neither have I heard of such, I didn't even know that's a thing. Unless you count cooking gone awry.
    - sseagull 3y ago
      When I bought my house we had one false alarm at night. Since the smoke detectors were past their prime (you are suppose to replace every 10 years) we replaced them all and haven’t had any problem since (>3 years). Just went off a few times when things got smokey in the kitchen. We replaced with this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/First-Alert-3120B-6-Pack-AC-Hardwired-120-Volt-Photoelectric-Sensor-Smoke-Detector/1003140562 https://www.lowes.com/pd/First-Alert-3120B-6-Pack-AC-Hardwir...
Animats 3y ago
Google seems to be appallingly bad at any non ad supported product. They've managed to screw up all their ISP products (Google Public WiFi, Fiber, Loon, etc.) Now the home automation products. The company has no culture of customer service, which dooms any product which requires it. I just hope they don't screw up self driving cars, where they're actually succeeding.
- silon42 3y ago
  This (Nest, and other home devices) can't be profitable if it requires much customer service anyway... It just needs to work after install with no issues (or changes/regressions) for 10-20 years.
  - j1dopeman 3y ago
    I contacted ecobee to get clarification on one of their wire diagrams and they were able to provide customer support. I buy zooz smart devices which are much cheaper than a nest and they have given me detailed wiring instructions based on photos I sent them. It is possible to be profitable and provide customer support. Most customers aren't contacting support every time they buy a product. Building a good reputation helps sell more product.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Well, they kept the phone line alive ever since the forst Nexuses. And I am glad they didn't kill when they switched to the Pixel brand. But then those devices support search and ads...
- Dma54rhs 3y ago
  It's a dead company but they will exist for very very long just like IBM.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  Maybe they actually succeed with that - dead people don't call customer support.
- joezydeco 3y ago
oasisbob 3y ago
Installing a Nest learning thermostat in the summer was ... illuminating. Turns out they only learn for the first few weeks. After three calls with tech support, we reset it enough times that it learned how to turn on the heat by 11am on weekdays. Perhaps someday someone will have the patience to try and get auto-learning working on the weekends too.
- prepend 3y ago
  I’ve used three nests for about 10 years. Their “learning” is ridiculous and has never been helpful. Every once in a while, they will completely rewrite my schedule to something stupid. It’s weird how wrong they are- setting to temps I’ve never set, setting at times I never want. I gave up and just have Alexa do time based automations to set temperatures. At least until google kills the nest api. I always found it funny how google’s “AI” is so stupid when it comes to user satisfaction instead of making them money.
dwayne_dibley 3y ago
I want google to be good, but I'm still pissed off about all the things they've killed in the past, specifically PICASA, Google Drive Sync and their RSS Reader. I'll never trust them again with locking myself into their ecosystem. The worry is when you buy into something like Nest, who later go on to be brought into Google.
- josteink 3y ago
  > The worry is when you buy into something like Nest, who later go on to be brought into Google. Obviously one cannot prevent things like that from happening, but when they do, you can decide to migrate to something else and just sell your existing (now Google) gear, to avoid Googley issues down the line. It may be cynical, but at that point the resale value might still be good because not everyone has caught on to Google being Google like this.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    No, you can prevent it from being a problem by only buying things that will work even if the company goes bankrupt or gets acquired or turns [more] evil. I owned a Fitbit, then they got bought by Google. Now I own a PineTime, and you know what? If somehow tomorrow Pine64 got bought out and killed by Google, my watch would not be worsened one bit.
- thombat 3y ago
  Amen. I'm still using Picasa: periodically I go prowling for an equivalent app but there's still nothing to touch it. Fuck their photo cloud: I have ADSL so uploads are sluggards. I need local storage, fast searching, good facial recognition, a lightweight UI, and that's Picasa. Of course the web-connected parts like positioning on a map or sharing online broke long ago, but they appear to have neglected to build in a kill switch so mere user me can keep on getting shit done, invulnerable to their idiocy-of-the-day
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    My dad used to be a very heavy Picasa user, I eventually transitioned him to "DigiKam" which seems to be working out - so maybe worth checking that if you haven't. (If it's simple enough for a man who's steadfastly refused to learn anything new for 40 years it might be easy to switch.) I've got a precious Lightroom 6 license so I've been sticking with that.
adoxyz 3y ago
In my household, we have decided to never purchase another Google device again. No Home Hub, No Cameras, No Pixel phones, No TV's running Android. I still have some legacy stuff that works, but will not give google another dollar. They have shown time and time and time again that they simply don't care. For the record I used to be a huge Google fan. Had many of the Pixel phones, had Nest cameras, doorbells, nest secure, nest protects, multiple TV's running Android TV, Stadia (lol), and more.
- wffurr 3y ago
  What was the final straw? Did you go full Apple instead?
  - baggachipz 3y ago
    I did. Outright killing the Nest Secure without warning nor compensation was my final straw. Say what you will about Apple, at least they support their products for a reasonable amount of time. I have since removed all Google apps from my phone. I purchased a Starling Home Hub[1] (works great btw) which controls my Nest thermostats, which will not be replaced with a Nest product when Google inevitably kills them too early. Nest was such a great product and brand, and Google completely fucked it up. [1]https://www.starlinghome.io/ https://www.starlinghome.io/
    - cjrp 3y ago
      I had no idea this existed, that's awesome for Nest users - thanks!
    - 6sp 3y ago
      Reasonable amount of time is an understatement I purchased an Apple Airport router probably over ten years ago for my parents and it still works flawlessly to this day and receives security updates despite it being discontinued for five years now. The older version has been discontinued longer and it too still receives iirc.
    - nunez 3y ago
dugite-code 3y ago
Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming a bit of a Luddite. This is one of the reasons any hardware I put in my house is local only or local first if I can't get away with it.
fredgrott 3y ago
Curious, is there major differences how project managers of engineering teams vs front end product operate? I do not have enough background experience to answer however my gut tells me that there are enough wide differences to be somewhat problematic of how PMs are trained and used at Google.
gkanai 3y ago
I use Gmail and Youtube and that's about it. ok I use Chrome too but I also use Firefox and Brave as well. I'm much more locked into Apple's ecosystem but at least Apple works very hard to ensure compatibility and supports hardware for many more years than Google does (with updates, etc.)
- debian3 3y ago
  Apple support software longterm too. It’s still message and FaceTime. During that time Google went from google talk, gtalk, voice, hangout, allo, duo, meet, wave, google chat, etc.
hoseja 3y ago
Anybody paying money for these boxed big brothers deserves to be failed by the corpos, as much and as often as possible.
jonstewart 3y ago
I continue to refuse my Nest app's demand that I "upgrade" from my old Nest account to my Google account. Perhaps there are more advanced features I don't know about that no longer work, but the strategy of keeping away from Google "upgrades" has worked well for me.
causi 3y ago
I saw what Google did to their Revolv customers. You'd have to be crazy to ever trust them for home automation again.
heywherelogingo 3y ago
So what? Google's reputation is well established. Nest customers know perfectly well what they're getting into.
teekert 3y ago
I have a Nest V3 Thermostat (my second one, after I moved recently I installed one in the new house again, it's still the most beautiful OpenTherm thermostat out there, not that there are any other good options, just read the reviews). I've been reading "Build" by Tony Fadell. It's just painful to read what Nest could have been. The V3 is nice, but there are still rough edges, the app loads slowly for example (no doubt because it needs data from the device via a cloud). And it is absolutely ridiculous how much trouble it is to let it talk to Home Assistant. Of course Tony is focused on the normal users (who just want stuff to work together, they don't care about open local APIs or Matter for example), which is a shame but understandable. At this point: Please Google just opensource the firmware or something, add a local api and be done with it. It feels like they just don't want to support the device. Such a shame, it's such a nice thermostat (hardware-wise an ethernet cable to the heatlink would have been nice, to optionally drop the dependency on wireless, I'd pay for that).
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Google WiFi had a local API for config and status etc. But it appeared to be single threaded and some API calls took 30s+, while all others queued up behind. Nobody can build a nice app based on such an API. The official app tried - there were spinners on every part of the UI. Even simple things like 'give me a graph of network bandwidth' would have gaps in the graph where the single threaded service was bogged down with other requests.
- JimA 3y ago
  After using a 3rd gen for 8 years, I just replaced my Nest 3rd gens with Ecobee Premiums. Used to be a proud Nest user, they even shaped my choice of a new home HVAC system to be something compatible. However, they (and their software) haven't changed since I bought them, they are stuck in 2015. Meanwhile Ecobee has been producing beautiful hardware and software that has not only caught up but surpassed the 5+ year headstart that Google/Nest squandered. Also read Build and I'm sure Tony is just sad at seeing the opportunity lost as Nest becomes a shell of itself.
  - teekert 3y ago
aynyc 3y ago
Google has entered the Steve Ballmer era.
nico 3y ago
Only see bad news coming out for google They seems to be dropping the ball across a big range of businesses, including ads and search Leadership seems to be struggling and employees not happy Where is google going and why is their stock going up?
jcpst 3y ago
When I bought my house, about 7 years ago, it came with a Nest thermostat. I have never hooked it up to the internet. It works quite well that way.
- teekert 3y ago
  Right! I love al my stuff in Home Assistant, but indeed, if you keep the nest offline it's just a nice looking thermostat that has one of the best ways to program or change your schedule. What more do you need?
nunez 3y ago
I had a Nest thermostat three years ago and got rid of it when they deprecated their PERFECTLY WORKING Nest app in favor of their "WTF IS THIS SHIT" Google Home app, which, SURPRISE, didn't work with G-Suite accounts! Settled on Ecobee for HVAC and Ring for everything else (did you know that Ring is an Amazon company? no? That's because Amazon doesn't mess with companies they acquire and try to shove everything into their Amazon Alexa app to double-down on failing corporate strategies). The promo-driven development there really needs to stop.
diamondfist25 3y ago
It’s cuz they focus way too much on leetcoding

198 points by hnburnsy 3y ago

> This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit

tjpnz 3y ago
Same thing's happening to Gmail.
nikanj 3y ago
Usually Google products get cancelled before they become useless piles of shit. Not sure how that's better
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The reality is that 90% of Google product dysfunction can be explained by the phrase: "shipping the org chart" not by any particular $$-related malice. Inter-product-area rivalries/competitions/dysfunctions. Product manager attention span problems. High ego, high-status engineers with nice new technological hammers (e.g. Flutter, Fuchsia, Dart) that absolutely need to find nails, so go take other people's projects to rewrite. Working in Home / Nest PA was very trying on the patience. They were bad for it, but the problem is endemic to anything user-facing at Google (see also Play Music vs YouTube Music, ChromeOS vs Android, Android Things, etc. etc.)
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  Yep. People used to make fun of Microsoft for their org chart where devdiv was holding a gun to everyone threatening to set fire to the building if Win32 was ever touched, but at least it was between massive orgs within a single massive org. Google has a bunch of managers all vying to get their own promotions and will not hesitate to fuck over both users and other teams just for their moment of glory at Google I/O. And all of this stems from the fact that there's no leadership at Google, with an absolute inability to rally troops together on a single, common goal.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    The problem at its root is despite this stuff being the major external public appearance of Google, it is in fact all just a side show to the real Google -- which is all data centre hosted core services stuff doing ads, search, etc. Behind all that stuff is an incredibly competent smart SRE team keeping the lights on and keeping things very efficient and reliable. And some boring but diligent SWEs writing the rather boring code to do all that boring stuff. That's what the real Google is, but it's invisible to the public. But all that ads money needs to be spent somewhere. And you can't grow your staff forever doing "boring" stuff. And if there's an exciting interesting project inside Google it's flies to shit, people stepping over each other for promotion.
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      It's indirectly noticeable by YouTube not having gone out of business despite a free model with high costs. Note also how its biggest competitor, Twitch, is owned by another data center giant : Amazon (AWS).
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        The only way YouTube and Twitch can stay in business is because their respective owners have the scale to demand massive, massive peering discounts from "last-mile" ISPs and, at least in the case of Google, can avoid middle men on the intercontinental fiber links as they simply have their own cables where they don't need to pay rents to anyone.
      - pas 3y ago
        YouTube has a lot of ads nowadays. Of course it can do that because it's in a quasi-monopolistic position, which is a direct result of Google cross-financing it from search ads revenue. (Similarly how Chrome got into its own position.)
  - lynx23 3y ago
    Since I read about Amanda Rosenberg, I am not surprised anymore. Actually, I am glad YouTube is the only Google product that I am using.
- achow 3y ago
  > "shipping the org chart" It is science :-) Conway's law: ..complex products end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. The law is applied primarily in the field of software architecture, though Conway directed it more broadly and its assumptions and conclusions apply to most technical fields. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
  - pas 3y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY&t=34m12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY&t=34m12s (one of the best illustrations, using Windows volume control components)
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    All the Conway's law says is that it's a top management failure.
- m463 3y ago
  Friends who worked for google seemed to be rewarded for new groundbreaking stuff, but were penalized for maintenance or saving money or anything having to do with the present. but "shipping the org chart" really explains a lot of tech good and bad. When sj was at apple, product was well-integrated software and hardware (as he ruled the org chart, which left no space for rivalries and fiefdoms) with every sh*tty iot device that phones home, marketing in the org chart makes for a monetized, not-private mess for customers.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    It seemed like Jobs at Apple and Gates at Microsoft avoided a huge amount of organizational bullshit via a technical fleet-in-being doctrine. [0] Even if their time and attention were finite, they inspired a credible worry throughout the company that they might suprisingly appear and demand answers on why a team is @$&@ing up tech / UX, as PMs/VPs rightly asked themselves "Do I want to be explaining my behavior to X?" Which seemed to tamp down on the amount of inter-fiefdom rivalries and wasted time. I don't get the impression many people are worried about Pichai breathing tech/ UX fire from on high in the same way. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      I think it's that what Microsoft had in the 90s and what Apple had in the 2010s (and to some degree now) was an existential clear mission. Forking off into idiocy was obviously discouraged by leadership but also the profit and survival and success motive was clear: ship improved iPhones and make revenue on them, improve and ship Office or Windows, etc. That's the source of revenue, that's the clear mission. Google's consumer products lack that. Google has an ad machine that just produces seemingly infinite cash. The hardware and consumer facing stuff is a sideshow. So it escapes project discipline.
      - 3y ago
- toss1 3y ago
  Sounds reasonably accurate. And what is obviously missing from this scenario is anyone in the Google organization that has the slightest care or concern for any customer need. Also strongly correlates with their obvious zero customer support / you-re-on-your-own practices. The entire company is just "what can we foist off on them this week?".
pimlottc 3y ago
Where is this quote from? It's not in the article.
- chrisbolt 3y ago
  This recent article by Cory Doctorow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35863876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35863876

saagarjha 3y ago

Here's hoping, but Nest was hit hard by layoffs this year :(

charles_f 3y ago

I will invest money in equipment operated by Google. While in general it's not great to rely on a backend service, additionally so when it comes to privacy and Google, on top of that Google has this habit of killing products without consideration for their customer base that I find unsettling.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Did you men to write > I will not invest money in equipment operated by Google. ? Because what you have now seems inconsistent.
- charles_f 3y ago
  Woopsy, yes
NickHoff 3y ago
I spent a while trying to find the 'but' in that sentence. I assume you meant 'not'. :)

quattrofan 3y ago

[dead]

rasz 3y ago

[flagged]

izacus 3y ago
Some deep wisdom here that we've never heard before. Thank you for your contribution.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  When you read something wise and learn something, it's not the wisdom. You're the wisdom.
pkulak 3y ago
They have a Matter-enabled thermostat. If that can integrate into Home Assistant without an internet connection (which should be the case), you are absolutely not “the product” for buying one. You’re just buying the best locally-controlled thermostat you can.

izacus 3y ago

Well, Fuchsia team that drives the OS on Nest devices were hit heavily by the layoffs[0], so I guess those lazy coasters won't be able to fix your problems anymore. [0]: https://9to5google.com/2023/01/21/fuchsia-area-120-google-layoffs/ https://9to5google.com/2023/01/21/fuchsia-area-120-google-la...

cjkarr 3y ago
Might be a net improvement, as the quality of the devices was headed downward even when the organization was fully staffed. I'd be content for the devices to be left alone in stasis instead of having someone tinker with something and break it, just as they made reliable Bluetooth connectivity that I used to take for granted into a daily exercise in frustration.

pkulak 3y ago

I remember years ago when Google I/O and Apple’s equivalent felt like the Super Bowl. Now I don’t even know when they are or really care. I miss those days.

nikanj 3y ago
The Google I/O announcements for year n: 1) New build system for Android, because https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ 2) Security architectural changes that patch theoretical issues of the 7th dimension, and mess up all existing apps unless the developer rewrites 80% of the codebase 3) Pixel n+1 with more mega-everything (megapixels, megabytes of memory, megahertz per cpu, etc)
- lostdog 3y ago
  Maybe the will follow up removing the headphone jack from the Pixel with an equally-stupid removal of the whole screen.
- gcatalfamo 3y ago
  I already knew what xkcd was linked, before opening it.
  - RealStickman_ 3y ago
    There's an xkcd for everything, but only 5 or so are linked regularly.
    - prepend 3y ago
      I’m surprised Munroe hasn’t made a meta xkcd about this phenomenon. I expect the top linked ones are: this, the single package holding up the internet, when to automate, git commands, and ???
      - hyperdimension 3y ago
        The 5$ wrench "cryptography attack" one and the spacebar heating up change one are two I see regularly here.

Nursie 3y ago

Said it last week but I’ll say again - they lost me when they made Google domains accounts unable to use the system. Massively unfriendly move.

kenhwang 3y ago

My Nest camera is pretty hilariously bad as well. It literally just watches my mailbox and the path to it, and 90% of the time, my mailman is able to sneak past it without setting off the motion detection. They're literally in frame and just walking for 10-20s but that's not enough to register as motion even on the highest sensitivity. The Ring with a similar vantage point detects it every time.

rantee 3y ago
I've heard similar stories from others. My Nest doorbell has issues, too, unless someone is right on the porch. I'm ready to get cameras but waiting for the next Prime Day when I can probably pick up two Rings for the price of one Nest cam (and maybe even a previous gen doorbell?). The multi-app thing, as most others have noted, is also infuriating and pathetic at this point. Not OK, Google.

disillusioned 3y ago

Google has spent nearly the last decade completely ruining any goodwill Nest had established through a comedy of errors and sheer, wanton incompetence. It's absolutely breathtaking how bad Google is at shipping functioning software. I don't know how Rick Osterloh or Rishi Chandra still have jobs, but they should answer for the following litany of catastrophic product decisions: * Google decides to abandon Nest as a separate, highly-prized brand and product line, and instead bring everything under the Google Home umbrella. This process is excruciating and a monumental, half-decade-long failure. It is the very definition of a legacy rewrite pattern gone awry, but coupled with billions of dollars of purchased, installed hardware in people's actual homes. * This starts with the "force Nest users to have a Google account to use Nest" and "Googlekill Works With Nest" decisions. Google decides to gate certain features and to encourage people to upgrade to the Google Home implementation of the Nest functionality, but completely left feature parity a decade behind. To wit, Google Home's app, beyond being buggy, also can't do basic things like allow for easy scrubbing of video feeds, or control of the Nest Protect smoke detectors. * Google also willfully murders Works With Nest, and kills with it the goodwill of hundreds of manufacturers who were pretty excited to build compatible products and services. This is migrated to a Works with Google/Assistant product that... again, completely lacks parity. They break the Home/Away functionality entirely. They delay this process a bit, and Works with Google catches up in some ways, but it takes literal years. * Google releases a new line of Nest Cams that... don't work with the Nest app. Indeed, you have to activate them in the Google Home app, and their feeds will not display in the Nest app. From a Product Manager perspective, this is very easy to back into: Google is on a slow, death-march termination of the Nest app, in favor of migrating to Google Home. Rather than building any new functionality into the Nest app (these new cams included battery and floodlight functions, for example), they decided it made more sense to force users to use the Google Home app. Except... the Google Home app STILL lacks parity with the now-8-year-old Nest app. The Google Home app, as of May the 8th in the year of our lord 2023, does not support the fantastic SightView video scrubbing functionality. Or, as it happens, ANY scrubbing functionality. It doesn't support the ability to generate and download video clips. And the web version, which has been in a public preview for over a year, STILL doesn't support the ability to even view the pre-tagged movement sessions that you can view in the mobile app. But to say this again: new Nest Cam users cannot view 100% of the video recorded by the Nest Cams. It is functionally impossible and completely ridiculous, considering the Dropcam/earlier Nest Cams have been able to do this for literally a decade. * Beyond that sheer lunacy, Rick Osterloh gets up on stage and has the temerity to announce with a big dumb grin on his face the Nest Doorbell: the "upgrade" (in literally no metric) from the older Nest Hello. This product has two variants: a wired and battery powered version, for people who don't have doorbell wiring. The wired product manages to ship into end users' hands with a curious limitation: even when wired, the product is INCAPABLE of recording 24-hour footage. Note that the Nest Hello, launched in 2017, supported this functionality out of the box and still does. When pressed for a reason, Rick says that the thermals were a limitation, coupled with how thin they wanted to make the product. I'll say this again slowly: for some reason, a Product Manager at Google thought that the THINNESS of a PERMANENTLY INSTALLED, FIXED LOCATION VIDEO DOORBELL was more important than its ability to actually record video reliably. How on earth do these people still have jobs? * Which brings us to two weeks ago. Google had already announced back in 2020 that they were killing the brilliantly designed, beautiful, extremely functional, nearly perfect Nest Secure alarm system. They stopped selling it, and then sunk $450M of money into ADT for... literally what reason, no one on planet earth can say. At the time, they announced they'd continue to support the Nest Secure. Well, that's no longer compatible with their designs to migrate people to the Google Home app, or to return their boondoggle style investment in ADT, so two weeks ago, Google announced that they'll be bricking every single person's Nest Secure, along with their (also) brilliantly designed hybrid Nest Detects: their combination motion and door open sensors, which _also_ feature a muting button and little nightlight. These things are a wonder of design, and still function perfect, and Google has decided to literally pull the plug and create an entire mountain of e-waste for the hell of it. They're offering users a free ADT system, which includes an ENORMOUS hub that is literally 5 times the size of the Nest Guard hub, and two motion and door sensors. That's it. There are users who spent hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Google's Nest Secure hardware, buying additional Nest Detect sensors, and they're all going into the trash now and literally no one knows why. Worse, the new product is markedly worse in every way. The ADT Hub is ENORMOUS. It has no business being this big. It does literally everything the Nest Guard does, but the Nest Guard is 1/5th the size, and tastefully designed. This thing looks like one of those massive cable modem/wireless router hybrids, except it's also your keypad for disarming your system. Gross. (Nest Guard crammed in battery backup, wifi, Nest Thread, cellular backup, a voice speaker, and an alarm siren into a very tasteful package.) Beyond that, Nest is also inherently stripping another piece of brilliant design for NO REASON: The Nest x Yale door lock (which I have three of in my house) currently unlocks my door AND disarms my security system automatically when I get home. It's hard to describe how amazing this functionality is. There is absolutely no indication that there will be any way to get the replacement ADT system to disarm from the door lock, even though Google has floated this idea of "Routines" (and a script engine) for over a year , with nothing to show for it. So in a year, I'll literally have to throw away my perfectly good Nest Guard and Nest Detects. I'm creating e-waste. I'll be replacing them with an uglier system with more parts and less functionality. How is this a win, Google? If I strip out the most cynical view of what's happening here (Google wanting to amp up sales of the ADT product they've invested in, but maybe not, because, again, they're actually giving these things away for free to Nest Secure users, so ostensibly losing money here), I can again understand how they came to such a hamfisted decision: they don't want to migrate the Nest Secure functionality into the Google Home app, and they signed a dumb agreement with ADT to sunset it. But once again, Google chooses to ignore the reputational damage and damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. They'll brick your perfectly functional hardware and make you downgrade to the newer, shittier model. And no one over there has the power to stop it? What the hell is Sundar doing over there, other than firing people and cashing insanely fat bonus checks? Meanwhile, Google also: * Migrated the Google Home Hubs away from legacy Linux OS to Fuschia, and then promptly murdered the Thread functionality that the locks and thermostat work with, removing a mesh network component * Still hasn't released a video scrubber for their new cameras. I cannot conceive of how this has taken them so long. This is the same company that owns YouTube, YouTubeTV, and... checks notes... the existing, already functional Nest app that does exactly what we want * Is ALSO killing old legacy Dropcams. More e-waste. These cameras work just fine, but Google is murdering them anyway. They're shipping you a replacement if you're an active Nest Aware subscriber, but only for up to two cameras. * Is NOT offering ANY compensation AT ALL for Nest Secure users outside of the US. They're just willfully destroying your $400-$1500+ investment for the hell of it. * Claims to be environmentally minded but generates e-waste with these deprecations. Google should take a page out of Sonos's book, when they caught the unholy backlash for their equally stupid idea of bricking legacy Sonos products: spin them out to a legacy app. Or build a connector, or open-source the firmware, or rewrite the firmware to even work with ADT. There are so many options that could be pursued in the year they've given us before they murder this thing. You would think a literal trillion dollar company could find their way here, but time and time again, Google proves that they don't know how to release hardware with a cohesive strategy. It's all spray and pray, and it's ridiculous. * Oh, and they're doing all sorts of stupid stuff with FitBit too, but I won't even get into that. How. Do. These. People. Still. Have. Jobs. There. How do they expect to ever be trusted by anyone again? How do they think this is a good or right call, and why is no one speaking up and advocating for their USERS? I'm genuinely asking. I don't work there, I don't understand how something like this happens.

tomsmeding 3y ago

People I know well recently decided to buy some Nest products, so I was very interested to read this article. But I was disappointed to find that the article has basically zero content? It just seems to... end without actually saying anything beyond "Google bad". In what specific ways has Google failed its customers with Nest products? Is it just the app (the only thing mentioned in the article)?

lysozyme 3y ago

Nest still sends me a monthly summary email for account that’s maybe nine years stale, despite my repeated attempts to get them to stop. Their customer support says there’s “nothing they can do”. The Nest smoke alarms at a friend’s house say (as in play over the speakers a voice saying) “Remote access attempt detected” every so often while we’re sitting in the living room. At least twice a year they go off in the middle of the night (without smoke). So I guess when you’re contacting customers who don’t want it, and your alarms wrongly sound, I would say you have a problem with your false positive rate

borski 3y ago
I mean - have you sniffed the network traffic to see if anyone is trying to remotely access the Nest Protect? :)
darkwater 3y ago
I would have tore them off the first time they went off in a false alarm.
- wffurr 3y ago
  You must not have any smoke alarms at all, then. Every smoke alarm in every place I’ve ever lived has had false alarms. I hate smoke detectors so much. The manufacturers are too scared of liability to consider that smoke alarms only work if they’re plugged in and the alarms can be trusted. If you unplug the smoke alarms due to false alarms, then all the liability is on you, not the manufacturer. I’d happily pay a premium for smoke alarms less prone to false alarms, but none such exist as far as I can tell.
  - distances 3y ago
    For what it's worth, I have never had a false smoke alarm. Neither have I heard of such, I didn't even know that's a thing. Unless you count cooking gone awry.
  - sseagull 3y ago
    When I bought my house we had one false alarm at night. Since the smoke detectors were past their prime (you are suppose to replace every 10 years) we replaced them all and haven’t had any problem since (>3 years). Just went off a few times when things got smokey in the kitchen. We replaced with this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/First-Alert-3120B-6-Pack-AC-Hardwired-120-Volt-Photoelectric-Sensor-Smoke-Detector/1003140562 https://www.lowes.com/pd/First-Alert-3120B-6-Pack-AC-Hardwir...

Animats 3y ago

Google seems to be appallingly bad at any non ad supported product. They've managed to screw up all their ISP products (Google Public WiFi, Fiber, Loon, etc.) Now the home automation products. The company has no culture of customer service, which dooms any product which requires it. I just hope they don't screw up self driving cars, where they're actually succeeding.

silon42 3y ago
This (Nest, and other home devices) can't be profitable if it requires much customer service anyway... It just needs to work after install with no issues (or changes/regressions) for 10-20 years.
- j1dopeman 3y ago
  I contacted ecobee to get clarification on one of their wire diagrams and they were able to provide customer support. I buy zooz smart devices which are much cheaper than a nest and they have given me detailed wiring instructions based on photos I sent them. It is possible to be profitable and provide customer support. Most customers aren't contacting support every time they buy a product. Building a good reputation helps sell more product.
hef19898 3y ago
Well, they kept the phone line alive ever since the forst Nexuses. And I am glad they didn't kill when they switched to the Pixel brand. But then those devices support search and ads...
Dma54rhs 3y ago
It's a dead company but they will exist for very very long just like IBM.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
Maybe they actually succeed with that - dead people don't call customer support.
joezydeco 3y ago

oasisbob 3y ago

Installing a Nest learning thermostat in the summer was ... illuminating. Turns out they only learn for the first few weeks. After three calls with tech support, we reset it enough times that it learned how to turn on the heat by 11am on weekdays. Perhaps someday someone will have the patience to try and get auto-learning working on the weekends too.

prepend 3y ago
I’ve used three nests for about 10 years. Their “learning” is ridiculous and has never been helpful. Every once in a while, they will completely rewrite my schedule to something stupid. It’s weird how wrong they are- setting to temps I’ve never set, setting at times I never want. I gave up and just have Alexa do time based automations to set temperatures. At least until google kills the nest api. I always found it funny how google’s “AI” is so stupid when it comes to user satisfaction instead of making them money.

dwayne_dibley 3y ago

I want google to be good, but I'm still pissed off about all the things they've killed in the past, specifically PICASA, Google Drive Sync and their RSS Reader. I'll never trust them again with locking myself into their ecosystem. The worry is when you buy into something like Nest, who later go on to be brought into Google.

josteink 3y ago
> The worry is when you buy into something like Nest, who later go on to be brought into Google. Obviously one cannot prevent things like that from happening, but when they do, you can decide to migrate to something else and just sell your existing (now Google) gear, to avoid Googley issues down the line. It may be cynical, but at that point the resale value might still be good because not everyone has caught on to Google being Google like this.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  No, you can prevent it from being a problem by only buying things that will work even if the company goes bankrupt or gets acquired or turns [more] evil. I owned a Fitbit, then they got bought by Google. Now I own a PineTime, and you know what? If somehow tomorrow Pine64 got bought out and killed by Google, my watch would not be worsened one bit.
thombat 3y ago
Amen. I'm still using Picasa: periodically I go prowling for an equivalent app but there's still nothing to touch it. Fuck their photo cloud: I have ADSL so uploads are sluggards. I need local storage, fast searching, good facial recognition, a lightweight UI, and that's Picasa. Of course the web-connected parts like positioning on a map or sharing online broke long ago, but they appear to have neglected to build in a kill switch so mere user me can keep on getting shit done, invulnerable to their idiocy-of-the-day
- sanitycheck 3y ago
  My dad used to be a very heavy Picasa user, I eventually transitioned him to "DigiKam" which seems to be working out - so maybe worth checking that if you haven't. (If it's simple enough for a man who's steadfastly refused to learn anything new for 40 years it might be easy to switch.) I've got a precious Lightroom 6 license so I've been sticking with that.

adoxyz 3y ago

In my household, we have decided to never purchase another Google device again. No Home Hub, No Cameras, No Pixel phones, No TV's running Android. I still have some legacy stuff that works, but will not give google another dollar. They have shown time and time and time again that they simply don't care. For the record I used to be a huge Google fan. Had many of the Pixel phones, had Nest cameras, doorbells, nest secure, nest protects, multiple TV's running Android TV, Stadia (lol), and more.

wffurr 3y ago
What was the final straw? Did you go full Apple instead?
- baggachipz 3y ago
  I did. Outright killing the Nest Secure without warning nor compensation was my final straw. Say what you will about Apple, at least they support their products for a reasonable amount of time. I have since removed all Google apps from my phone. I purchased a Starling Home Hub[1] (works great btw) which controls my Nest thermostats, which will not be replaced with a Nest product when Google inevitably kills them too early. Nest was such a great product and brand, and Google completely fucked it up. [1]https://www.starlinghome.io/ https://www.starlinghome.io/
  - cjrp 3y ago
    I had no idea this existed, that's awesome for Nest users - thanks!
  - 6sp 3y ago
    Reasonable amount of time is an understatement I purchased an Apple Airport router probably over ten years ago for my parents and it still works flawlessly to this day and receives security updates despite it being discontinued for five years now. The older version has been discontinued longer and it too still receives iirc.
  - nunez 3y ago

dugite-code 3y ago

Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming a bit of a Luddite. This is one of the reasons any hardware I put in my house is local only or local first if I can't get away with it.

fredgrott 3y ago

Curious, is there major differences how project managers of engineering teams vs front end product operate? I do not have enough background experience to answer however my gut tells me that there are enough wide differences to be somewhat problematic of how PMs are trained and used at Google.

gkanai 3y ago

I use Gmail and Youtube and that's about it. ok I use Chrome too but I also use Firefox and Brave as well. I'm much more locked into Apple's ecosystem but at least Apple works very hard to ensure compatibility and supports hardware for many more years than Google does (with updates, etc.)

debian3 3y ago
Apple support software longterm too. It’s still message and FaceTime. During that time Google went from google talk, gtalk, voice, hangout, allo, duo, meet, wave, google chat, etc.

hoseja 3y ago

Anybody paying money for these boxed big brothers deserves to be failed by the corpos, as much and as often as possible.

jonstewart 3y ago

I continue to refuse my Nest app's demand that I "upgrade" from my old Nest account to my Google account. Perhaps there are more advanced features I don't know about that no longer work, but the strategy of keeping away from Google "upgrades" has worked well for me.

causi 3y ago

I saw what Google did to their Revolv customers. You'd have to be crazy to ever trust them for home automation again.

heywherelogingo 3y ago

So what? Google's reputation is well established. Nest customers know perfectly well what they're getting into.

teekert 3y ago

I have a Nest V3 Thermostat (my second one, after I moved recently I installed one in the new house again, it's still the most beautiful OpenTherm thermostat out there, not that there are any other good options, just read the reviews). I've been reading "Build" by Tony Fadell. It's just painful to read what Nest could have been. The V3 is nice, but there are still rough edges, the app loads slowly for example (no doubt because it needs data from the device via a cloud). And it is absolutely ridiculous how much trouble it is to let it talk to Home Assistant. Of course Tony is focused on the normal users (who just want stuff to work together, they don't care about open local APIs or Matter for example), which is a shame but understandable. At this point: Please Google just opensource the firmware or something, add a local api and be done with it. It feels like they just don't want to support the device. Such a shame, it's such a nice thermostat (hardware-wise an ethernet cable to the heatlink would have been nice, to optionally drop the dependency on wireless, I'd pay for that).

londons_explore 3y ago
Google WiFi had a local API for config and status etc. But it appeared to be single threaded and some API calls took 30s+, while all others queued up behind. Nobody can build a nice app based on such an API. The official app tried - there were spinners on every part of the UI. Even simple things like 'give me a graph of network bandwidth' would have gaps in the graph where the single threaded service was bogged down with other requests.
JimA 3y ago
After using a 3rd gen for 8 years, I just replaced my Nest 3rd gens with Ecobee Premiums. Used to be a proud Nest user, they even shaped my choice of a new home HVAC system to be something compatible. However, they (and their software) haven't changed since I bought them, they are stuck in 2015. Meanwhile Ecobee has been producing beautiful hardware and software that has not only caught up but surpassed the 5+ year headstart that Google/Nest squandered. Also read Build and I'm sure Tony is just sad at seeing the opportunity lost as Nest becomes a shell of itself.
- teekert 3y ago

aynyc 3y ago

Google has entered the Steve Ballmer era.

nico 3y ago

Only see bad news coming out for google They seems to be dropping the ball across a big range of businesses, including ads and search Leadership seems to be struggling and employees not happy Where is google going and why is their stock going up?

jcpst 3y ago

When I bought my house, about 7 years ago, it came with a Nest thermostat. I have never hooked it up to the internet. It works quite well that way.

teekert 3y ago
Right! I love al my stuff in Home Assistant, but indeed, if you keep the nest offline it's just a nice looking thermostat that has one of the best ways to program or change your schedule. What more do you need?

nunez 3y ago

I had a Nest thermostat three years ago and got rid of it when they deprecated their PERFECTLY WORKING Nest app in favor of their "WTF IS THIS SHIT" Google Home app, which, SURPRISE, didn't work with G-Suite accounts! Settled on Ecobee for HVAC and Ring for everything else (did you know that Ring is an Amazon company? no? That's because Amazon doesn't mess with companies they acquire and try to shove everything into their Amazon Alexa app to double-down on failing corporate strategies). The promo-driven development there really needs to stop.

diamondfist25 3y ago

It’s cuz they focus way too much on leetcoding