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.

Comments

Re:Treasure what little time remains in your lives

[craigminah]

Reminds me of the Mars Attacks aliens saying "We come in peace, we mean you no harm" right before they pew-pewed everyone.

You can never trust companies

[mbone]

In his blog post, he says that data won't be shared with anyone, including Google, without a customer's permission.

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.

Privacy policy

[QuietLagoon]

From the summary:

...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.