Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest

JDG1980 writes "Google just announced that they will be purchasing Nest, a company best known for their 'smart' thermostats and smoke detectors, for $3.2 billion in cash. What will this mean for Nest devices going forward — greater integration with Android, perhaps?"

Comments

Track your every move

[Anonymous Coward]

What they'll do is track when you're home, what temperature you like your house, whether you're cold at night, etc, and then use it to advertise at you. Isn't that what Google does with everything?

Re:Track your every move

[Tablizer]

Google Buys Clippy:

"I see you are using your heater often. Would you like to purchase soft wool blankets from one of our highly-rated sponsors?"

Re:Track your every move

[DaHat]

You forgot "requiring Google+ integration for managing your NEST".

Re:Track your every move

[msauve]

New Google advertising jingle:

We see you when you're sleeping
we know when you're awake
we'll tell you what you want to buy
so you better buy stuff for Google's sake

Re:Track your every move

[lgw]

Slashdot 2015: Google announces end of life for Nest products, citing low advertising revenue from the platform.

Oh, well, one gone, but three more will pop up hoping for that multi-billion buyout.

Re:Track your every move

[phrostie]

Remember when it wasn't Google's fault that their street view cars intercepted your emails?

Nest uses your home network.
now it won't matter if you're on gmail or not.

Re:Track your every move

[Anubis IV]

Pretty much. To quote the relevant part:

Will Nest customer data be shared with Google?

Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.

If they had plans to keep Nest's data away from Google after the acquisition, they'd have said it plainly as they have with everything else they say. The fact that they aren't doing that here makes it pretty clear what their intent is.

I have a Nest thermostat and have loved it, but I'm actually kinda glad I ran into some financial issues that led to my cancelling my pre-order for Protect smoke/CO detector for my entire house. I definitely won't be buying them now, and I'll be seriously considering whether or not I keep my thermostat.

Re:Track your every move

[Pirogoeth]

http://i.imgur.com/xmBV4n0.jpg

Re:Track your every move

[icebike]

Nor would the under $20 fully programmable, been around since dirt, standard as the day is long, conventional wall thermostat.

Come on for pete sake, turning on the heat when its cold is the job of a thermostat. They've been doing it since the 30s, and became programmable since the late 70s. Don't act so impressed that your thermostat actually worked.

You've paid in excess of 15 times what you needed to pay for program-ability, only to have it be totally dependent on the internet!

There's one born every minute.

$3.2B

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculous sum of money for Nest. Google is starting to look like a has been trying to buy their way to relevance like Microsoft.

Re:I think $3.2B is too much

[bob_super]

Only of you draw a cloud on it

The Thermostat by H.L. Mencken, 1931

[PapayaSF]

THE THERMOSTAT

Of all the great inventions of modern times the one that has given me most comfort and joy is one that is seldom heard of, to wit, the thermostat. I was amazed, some time ago, to hear that it was invented at least a generation ago. I first heard of it during the War of 1914-18, when some kind friend suggested that I throw out the coal furnace that was making steam in my house and put in a gas furnace. Naturally enough, I hesitated, for the human mind is so constituted. But the day I finally succumbed must remain ever memorable in my annals, for it saw me move at one leap from an inferno into a sort of paradise. Everyone will recall how bad the coal was in those heroic days. The patriotic anthracite men loaded their culm-piles on cars, and sold them to householders all over the East. Not a furnaceman was in practise in my neighborhood: all of them were working in the shipyards at $15 a day. So I had to shovel coal myself, and not only shovel coal, but sift ashes. It was a truly dreadful experience. Worse, my house was always either too hot or too cold. When a few pieces of actual coal appeared in the mass of slate the temperature leaped up to 85 degrees, but most of the time it was between 45 and 50.

The thermostat changed all that, and in an instant. I simply set it at 68 degrees, and then went about my business. Whenever the temperature in the house went up to 70 it automatically turned off the gas under the furnace in the cellar, and there was an immediate return to 68. And if the mercury, keeping on, dropped to 66, then the gas went on again, and the temperature was soon 68 once more. I began to feel like a man liberated from the death-house. I was never too hot or too cold. I had no coal to heave, no ashes to sift. My house became so clean that I could wear a shirt five days. I began to feel like work, and rapidly turned out a series of imperishable contributions to the national letters. My temper improved so vastly that my family began to suspect senile changes. Moreover, my cellar became as clean as the rest of the house, and as roomy as a barn. I enlarged my wine-room by 1000 cubic metres. I put in a cedar closet big enough to hold my whole wardrobe. I added a vault for papers, a carpenter shop, and a praying chamber.

H.L. Mencken
The Boons of Civilization
From the American Mercury, Jan., 1931, pp. 33-35