So there are other things going on here and I did end up moving from Nest to Ecobee and mostly am okay with the switch. (The bar is very, very low right now.)

So there are other things going on here and I did end up moving from Nest to Ecobee and mostly am okay with the switch. (The bar is very, very low right now.) But I wanted to clarify about video recording and viewing 100% of clips: there are two service levels from Google: either you’re grandfathered on older pricing plans per camera and can see a 24/7 recording or you upgrade to new plans per household that they sell now where the camera only records and sends motion or sounds, not 24/7 feed recordings like the old Dropcam used to. You can’t buy the old way of recording 24/7 from every camera as far as I know, and the only reason I can think of that they switched recording modes is because it saves power and is more efficient so hardware might not break as often via overheating. I mean, they might claim it is more efficient for storage, but they have stationary cameras - compression has to be good, right? Anyway, just pointing out that generating clips from video recordings is kind of the old way, and the new way is that it somehow automatically makes clips for you as motion alerts. But… outside of that I agree 100% that Nest has been basically dead since the rebranding. That Ecobee still has any unique features Google doesn’t have largely stems from this lack of innovation. Ecobee is now owned by a company that makes generators, the kind that runs on gas or diesel. It’s hard to imagine that Google can’t ship new features, apps or software products faster than a company that makes industrial appliances and yet here we are. Google makes too much money from ads to care about any other way to make money, long term. I’m shocked they don’t just give away these smart devices and wire them up to play YouTube ads with facial recognition at this point. Maybe they’re waiting for Amazon to try it first, or want to experiment with Google TV ads like Fire TV and Samsung already do. If my Apple TV ever starts auto-playing trailers and ads, I’m going to permanently switch to using AirPlay, I think. As for the Dropcam, maybe I’ll replace it with an iCloud video camera when the time comes…