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On Google's Acquisition of Nest
- brooksbp 13y ago> “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” That’s never been true of Google What about the pluto switch or the custom servers? Sure, they don't make chips or maybe don't even do PCB layout and all of that stuff, but I'm sure they have great hardware designers and embedded software people, no? I didn't even mention the google glass, mobile devices, and self-driving cars. EDIT: Got it. Thanks. Was too eager to respond..
- nickheer 13y agoHe mentions that in the second-from-last paragraph: > The software that Google was most serious about — web search, Gmail, and so forth — ran in the cloud, and with the company’s legendary data centers, they effectively built their own hardware.
- adnrw 13y agoDid you read the next sentence/paragraph? > In a sense, Google has always followed Kay’s adage. The software that Google was most serious about — web search, Gmail, and so forth — ran in the cloud, and with the company’s legendary data centers, they effectively built their own hardware.
- kordless 13y agoThey just bought a ton of robot companies. Now they are buying a company who can do consumer products - home automation stuff, in fact. They have Ray and that 512 qbit quantum computer. I can see what they are doing, I think. They are creating Google Robot. They were always going to do this. Google-Bot. Android. The challenges to go to the moon. Oh, and iGoogle.
- cloudwalking 13y agoI think the name you're looking for is Skynet.
- nsns 13y ago...or Tyrell Corporation.
- mzl 13y agoThe "quantum computer" is a good marketing gimmick, but the problem it solves is fairly uninteresting. See http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 for some critical discussion of the D-Wave machine.
- brotchie 13y agoThe Ising model Hamiltonian that the D-Wave computer "evolves" almost directly maps to the energy equation you have to minimize to train a restricted Boltzmann machine. I wouldn't call this "uninteresting" given the rapid advances in leveraging Boltzmann machines for deep learning.
- mzl 13y agoOk, I agree that it can be interesting for some cases, but it is not at all what people expect when they hear "quantum computer". In addition, the comparisons with traditional methods for solving that problem show that you may as well solve the problem on normal hardware. Then the problem it solves stated as "Ising model Hamiltonian using quantum computer" is fairly uninteresting given that it is cheaper and simpler to solve the "Ising model Hamiltonian using classical hardware".
- cdibona 13y agoIt is only 509 qubits. I keep wanting to say it has 512, too...
- kordless 13y agoMaybe the lost a few to decoherence.
- cdibona 13y agoFrom what I can tell, it's a side effect of the way they architect the inter cell (a cell is 6 or 7 qubits) communications. This points to a larger problem of course, where we can show entanglement within the cell but cross cell entanglement isn't as clear (to me, but I might be behind the curve on this)
- codex 13y agoI have a hard time believing Nest sold due to scaling issues. I find an easier time believing that they did not have the money to achieve their (expensive) vision, and selling to Google was easier than raising a massive round. It's the classic "our product is good but doesn't make any money; solution: double down." Nest has a huge staff for what it currently sells.
- cloudwalking 13y agoI don't think so. Nest was in the middle of closing a $150M round at a $2B valuation. That doesn't smell like a company going out of business, that sounds like a company preparing to scale like crazy. Fadell has intimate knowledge of Apple's scaling troubles—LaLa, iTunes Store, App Store, MobileMe, etc—and Apple has infinite money. Building truly scalable web services is no easy task, and Google is head and shoulders more capable than anybody else. Do not look at Nest as a thermostat company. Look at what they could be 10 years from now—the timescale Fadell is surely thinking on—and you begin to understand the real scaling issues they will face.
- codex 13y agoI see a $150M round as a failure: a company that has big dreams but can't make enough cash at what they currently do. Even Tesla only raised $200M at IPO, and that's for a car company with huge overhead and manufacturing capital costs. $150M for a company that assembles products from COTS parts in China is ridiculous.
- cloudwalking 13y agoYou can see it however you want, but that won't change what it actually is. Companies raise huge rounds when they've nailed their product, their production lines, and their sales funnel. They know what they're doing and need cash to accelerate. Venture capital is not charity.
- grinich 13y agoNest has a huge staff for what it currently sells. I thought something similar. And then I worked there for a summer. Building hardware is much more difficult than you think, in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Someone like Tony can easily raise capital in Silicon Valley, and Nest's products were selling extremely well across many retail locations. I'd be astonished if they were running out of money. Why is it surprising that scaling is the issue? Tony's entire background is in devices and hardware, not large software systems. They have a huge complex stack. Imagine building a system with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of connected nodes, all streaming realtime data that must be analyzed, and which can't ever go down. A Django app just won't cut it. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Nest. The machine learning is surprisingly sophisticated.
- Steko 13y agoThis touches back to Gruber's assertion that Google is getting better at what Apple does best (device design) faster than Apple is getting better at what Google does best (web services).
- Thirdegree 13y agoI feel like Google in 2014 is going to be releasing a lot of aesthetic updates. With the recent acquisition of timely + this new one, they've bought two teams at least partially known for beautiful design.
- gfodor 13y ago...and soon robotics. I'm a huge Apple fanboy but they really need to get their shit together on the web services front. Siri still sucks almost unbelievably bad. It never works. Maps still leads me to random streets and goes in circles. As we move towards smaller and smaller devices one has to assume more of the work is going to be happening in the data center. Not good news for Apple unless they start making some real strategic acquisitions stat. (They've started at least.)
- rmason 13y agoCan someone explain to me why Apple didn't acquire Nest? He's a known quantity at Apple and he's doing hardware that would expand their market. I know they don't do a lot of acquisitions but this would seem to be a no-brainer for them.
- laureny 13y ago> Can someone explain to me why Apple didn't acquire Nest? I'm guessing that to them, it's all or nothing: either they invent and market the product, or they're not interested. Unsustainable hubris, if you ask me.
- snom380 13y agoMy guess from the kind of companies they buy, is that their products really need to fit with Apples area of focus. If not, they buy the company for the talent or technology (like FingerWorks).
- qdog 13y agoI'm getting old. Wasn't even aware of Nest. However, 5% of Google seems like a large amount of money to acquire a startup. What did I miss?
- cmelbye 13y agoBeautiful understated home automation designed better than any other company has designed similar products in the past. You should really take a look, I'm surprised that it's possible to not have heard of them before.
- hueving 13y agoTo clarify, it's a very small part of home automation. Just thermostat and smoke detectors (as of recently). They haven't even branched into locks/lights/etc. I'm really excited to see where they go.
- ajcarpy2005 13y agoThey have an nice, recognizable brand name for home automation, anyway: 'nest'
- hnriot 13y agofor 99.99% of the population a simple thermostat works just fine. And nearly all of them don't even understand that the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air, but rather the duration it remains on. NEST is pretty, but way over engineered for the task. Consumers just don't need it. I'm all for technology and am an early adopter and of course have heard of NEST, seen them etc. Like you say, it's hard to imagine some one here not having done so, but my guess is the commenter has seen them, but just didn't take it in because "home automation" has a long legacy of being utter crap. When you get past the pretty design, there's nothing really to the thing. It's just a massively over engineered pretty consumer device that very few people need. I'm pretty sure Apple didn't buy them because they could just as simply designed their own. I fail to see why the thermostat can't (if Apple were to design it) not have a UI at all but rather just be a little plugin thing, maybe "Thermoport Express" and you use your iPhone to make changes from anywhere, don't even need to get up and look at the device. Any hardware solution quickly looks old. The iPhone (to Apple) is the UI for everything.
- laureny 13y agoWow, it's almost as if Gruber is running out of negative things to say about Google.
- ghshephard 13y agoHe's a partisan, but he calls them like he sees them. I remember when the Original Nokia Lumias rolled out, he had good things to say about both the software and the build quality.
- wmeredith 13y agoGruber calls both Google and Apple on their bullshit all the time. He just knows more about Apple.
- laureny 13y agoThat's not true, most of the stuff he posts about Google is negative and positive about Apple. This article is the first exception I see in years (and it's not even positive about Google, it's just neutral, which is already quite a departure from his usual prose).
- f_salmon 13y agoAfter all we now know about data being collected about us, against our will, and sooner or later used against our interests, is it smart to have Google also have data about your home?
- lazyjones 13y agoThis development can't be stopped. Since one company is reckless enough to push and benefit from it, others will follow and it will become the norm. It's not the first time that potentially malicious technology gets sold on apparent advantages for consumers. If that doesn't work, they can still bribe government entities / the EU commission (see smart meters).
- hackaflocka 13y agoI've been detecting a subtext of exasperation in some of Gruber's posts about Google vs Apple. Gruber, of course, is not an Apple fan-boy, per se. He's a tech fan-boy. He has displayed plenty of love for Amazon, and though he is very shy of Google's sleazy tactics, he clearly admires certain aspects of Google's enterprise. But it's almost as if he's beginning to wonder about Apple's cojones.
- RRWagner 13y agoNow all I see when I look at my Nest is a Google eye, that knows (because I told it!) when I'm "away". :( (for more creepy fun, do a Google image search for "HAL 9000")
- mcintyre1994 13y agoMore than getting Google into consumer products, it'd be great if this pushed them to launch the platform of the internet of things. Just like Android unified the market like nobody else would, nobody else is going to give small consumer device makers a way into that internet of things and it'll end up horribly fragmented without something like Google providing a platform. Without that platform I can't see how it could go mainstream.
- neals 13y agoGreat way to get to know people's living habits, when people are home and at work. Add a little speaker and advertise right into the living room. Then cancel the device after 2 years because it doesn't fit into Google vision anymore.
- waps 13y agoOh noes ! They're going to start ... well, euhm ... a radio station ?
- Nickoladze 13y ago>Add a little speaker and advertise right into the living room. And to think people are paying monthly for cable television!
- smackfu 13y agoOur smartphones are already tracking our home and work addresses. And have much higher penetration.
- WalterBright 13y agoWouldn't it have been far cheaper to just build their own Nest (and license any patents)?
- Istof 13y agoWouldn't it have been cheaper to buy Facebook instead of trying to build your own
- henriquea 13y agoAt the end of the day it's all about money.