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Google's Nest Buys Home Monitoring Camera Company Dropcam
rtoz writes: The popular home monitoring camera startup "Dropcam" will be acquired by Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors. The deal is worth $555 million in cash. Nest itself was purchased by Google just four months ago for $3.2 billion. Dropcam is a cloud-based, Wi-Fi video monitoring service, founded in 2009. It lets users place cameras throughout a home for live-viewing and recording. The cameras also include options for night vision and two-way talking with built-in microphones. Dropcam has never disclosed sales, but it is routinely the top-selling security camera on Amazon, and it recently branched into selling in retail stores like Apple and Best Buy. People concerned about the privacy implications of Google's acquisition of Nest may be further unsettled by Nest's purchase of a home surveillance company. Nest's founder Matt Rogers anticipated this issue, and insisted that there's no reason to worry. In his blog post, he says that data won't be shared with anyone, including Google, without a customer's permission. Nest has run into product challenges recently.
All your everything are belong to us!
(But we're NOT evil.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Let me guess. Privacy statement includes quotes like
"We will cooperate with local authorities"
"We will provide access when required by law"
"We will never compromise users data except when..."
so typical in totalitarian regimes.
Could Google be any more transparent as a willing and eager participant of the surveillance state?
It'd be nice if they'd at least pretend to hide what they are doing, so as to not so blatently insult our intelligence.
I'm surprised Foscam isn't the #1 seller, I guess it comes down to marketing and looks for a lot of people. Foscam is less expensive and in some ways is superior (e.g. they don't limit features to upsell you on some bullshit cloud monitoring subscription).
Clarity please. Does the submitter mean competition? Legal challenges to the product? Logistical challenges with the products?
In other words customers can expect a future firmware upgrade with associated new terms and if they refuse them they will lose (at least) every feature which utilises a network.
Seriously... who in their right mind would involve Google in their home security?
Might as well just hire Big Brother.
Clarity please. Does the submitter mean competition? Legal challenges to the product? Logistical challenges with the products?
It's clear submitter meant https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2014/Nest-Labs-Recalls-to-Repair-Nest-Protect-Smoke-CO-Alarms/.
Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls are reasonably considered a product challenge.
I'm watching the tubes, I'm in ur thermostat, and I'm lookin in ur spycam, I r big brother
What could possibly go wrong?
How long before Google and a handful of other companies can more or less monitor, analyze, measure, and monetize every aspect of what you do in your own home and everywhere else? And then pretty much own the data, and be compelled to hand it to government agencies.
Where is Blank Reg when you need him?
Time for another layer of tinfoil.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You can, at least at times, trust people, especially ones you know well. A person's word may mean something.
You can, however, never trust companies unless you have a contractual relation with them (and, at times, not even then). A company's word is meaningless. Times change, people change, and what was impossible can become all too easy. The day will come, for example, when Mr Rogers is no longer at Dropcam / Nest / Google, and his successor may feel differently (or may be ordered to feel differently) about this.
This is without mentioning the elastic definitions of "permission" used at times on the Internet.
...he says that data won't be shared with anyone, including Google, without a customer's permission. ...
What he actually says is:
...Like Nest customer data, Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission....
What Nest's privacy policy actually says is:
We pledge to: ... Ask your permission before sharing your Personally Identifiable Information with third parties for purposes other than to provide Nest’s services,
Notice how, we won't share your data with anyone without your permission in the article suddenly morphs into we won't share your personally identifiable information with anyone in the actual privacy policy statement?
What about the other non-personally identifiable data, like when my house is empty? Or how many people are in the house? etc, etc.
Here's a message to Google employees:
Find yourself a more meaningful job. Something in medicine, or in particle physics.
Or, just about anything outside of that shady advertisement business.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I don't trust dropcam one bit
Said 'permission' is on page 82 of a 346 page EULA, which if you do not agree you cannot use the attached software for the cameras.
I did closed my "free" email accounts. I cant believe that Google et al. expects that not only we will let somebody else to control thermostat in our home but also install google cameras and google TV's on our refrigerators and other "things". Trust once lost can never be un-broken. I know that I am a minority, but I still cannot comprehend how so many people are ok with so much intrusion to the privacy. All of the house controls and security can and should be done without service providers, if any, knowing their customers.
Legally, Matt Roger's promise is worthless. If google owns nest, then everything, all the assets, including chairs, notes and employee ideas are also owned by google. In addition, to that sooner or later such company will be financially consolidated to google consolidated financial statements. Consolidated financial statements are often linked to Company's general ledger, which often is managed by the same enterprise system which also records the sales. Sales recording system will all the customer information. Nest's promise is a pinky promise.
What is funny about this whole thing is that the same privacy "advocates" who pretend to be so outraged at the mere possibility of being spied upon are the same people who constantly ask me why I haven't bought a Nest yet or installed an Internet-enabled home security system.
Truth is, there are smarter thermostats than the Nest out there already, that do not require any communications at all except with the HVAC system, and a security system need not hand your video over to a marketing company in order to be effective.
Internetting things for the sake of Internetting things was always and is now a terrible idea.
That could really go for a lot of the people in what we still politely refer to as 'silicon valley' rather than 'social valley'.
Well, of course they do.
"Customer's permission" is newspeak for terms of service buried two links deep and five pages of microtext from the top in a section labeled "beware of leopard"
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
also, did you miss in the news goog bought a satellite surveillance network? http://www.silicontap.com/goog...
Because $666 million would have looked evil.
Drop cam isn't that great... its impossible to record anything without paying for a subscription fee which is silly. I have a computer with an internet connection... a live stream to my harddrive is all I need. heck the whole thing should work within my internal office network indifferent to whether the gateway connects to the internet at all.
Lots of IP cameras on the market and most of them don't trap you into more cloud services subscription dependence-ware.
I don't buy tech things to chain myself to companies. I buy stuff because it makes me freer or more powerful or something positive.
The NEST is cool... drop cams are garbage. Good quality hardware and good quality software but a business plan that ruins it all.
An additional note on the nest, they don't work on Radiant Heat systems... I really wanted one of those but the dumb things can't handle a radiant heat system. So "oh well"... Guess I have to use some Honeywell retrograde relic-ware.... nothing to be done for it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How dare they make me decide to and then eventually buy a camera against my will so they can watch a 4x8 foot patch of my driveway.
The surveillance state is going to happen. You're a fool to believe otherwise.
Keep your google jobs. It's better to be the one wearing the boot.
Google already does both of those. Google flu, working with glucose sensors, and work with quantum computing just to name a few.
The fact that you have to assure people that Google will not invade their privacy, only reflects upon their data mining nature..
Telling people not to worry.. is worrying
You're an idiot.
https://startpage.com/
All of Dropcam's hardware is just stuff they get from OEMs in Shenzhen. They don't make it themselves, and in fact, the exact same hardware is sold by other camera vendors. But far more significant than the direct clones, there are also lots of not identical but still competing products that are just as good that go for a lot less.
The camera market is very cutthroat and low profit. Dropcam has no advantage here, not even name, because most people still haven't heard of them.
The only thing unique about Dropcam is the SaaS side but they don't do anything that could not be duplicated by others if they wanted to do it. Mostly nobody duplicates it because lots of IP camera customers just don't need that kind of service.
So what did Nest buy and why? A camera company selling generic OEM cameras you can source anywhere, or a SaaS company selling services that can be duplicated easily? It makes no sense to me.
Sig for hire.
The Nest learning thermostat. You can be a dummy and use it. You can use it with your smartphone. A $700 smartphone and a $300 thermostat, and even a dummy can do stuff like turn the temperature up in your house. ....and my thoughts are: "You pay $1000 to turn the heat up in your house, you really are a dummy". And that's how it was when I walked through a Home Depot, and saw one, and showed my dad the price $300. And he said WOW! and some guy comes by and says "Oh but its soooo much more than a thermostat, you don't need to know *ANYTHING* and it will figure it all out. You don't need to read any manual or have more than half a neuron in your entire head to make this go." And I said "But I already own a $30 Honeywell that already does all of this" And he replied "You can't take out your $700 smart phone and change the temperature in your house from Kuala Lumpur." And that is true. I would have to have more than half a neuron floating around in my head and set the temperature to an average 'away from home for weeks or months, possibly even for a change in season' sort of way. And I can do that in 5 seconds. But spending $30 is not nearly as much fun as spending $1000 (I don't happen to own a smart phone). So yeah Nest. Go buy one, along with "long distance internet security for dummies".
In the words of a song, "... paranoia, paranoia, everybody's out to get me, say that you never met me..."
People who don't realize the product belongs to the big G? Not to mention those that have already bought the product.
With all these takeovers, I wonder how many products actually have any sort of Google branding visible at the time of purchase.