Slashdot Mirror
Alphabet's Nest To Deliberately Brick Revolv Hubs
Nest, a Google-owned company, will deliberately break one of its own products come May 15. The company has announced plans to disable Revolv, a hub that allows customers to electronically control lights in their homes. Entrepreneur Arlo Gilbert raises some important questions: Google/Nest's decision raises an interesting question. When software and hardware are intertwined, does a warranty mean you stop supporting the hardware or does it mean that the manufacturer can intentionally disable it without consequence? Tony Fadell seems to believe the latter. Tony believes he has the right to reach into your home and pull the plug on your Nest products. [...] To be clear, they are not simply ceasing to support the product, rather they are advising customers that on May 15th a container of hummus will actually be infinitely more useful than the Revolv hub. Google is intentionally bricking hardware that I own. That's a pretty blatant "fuck you" to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware. They didn't post this notice until long after Google had made the acquisition, so these are Google's words under Tony Fadell's direction. Revolv was acquired by Nest in 2014, and it is believed that all Nest wanted from the acquisition was talent and workforce. An older version of Revolv website reveals that its hub was marketed to have "free lifetime service subscription," "free monthly updates for additional device support," and "free future firmware updates to automatically activate new radios." James Grimmelmann, a professor of Law, tweeted, "I didn't realize that Revolv promised free lifetime service. That makes the shutdown a deceptive trade practice as well as an unfair one." Aaron Parecki, co-founder of IndieWebCamp, wrote, "Your friendly reminder that without open standards, you're not "buying" smarthome hardware, you're renting it."
Oh, fuck it. Be evil and a jackass.
I've found that "lifetime" warranties are often for the product's lifetime, not the life of the owner.
So a lifetime warranty on a dishwasher might be 10 years. Not sure how they get away with that, but I've seen it more than once.
Firstly: to anyone who owns a nest and is counting their fleeting blessings that this will never happen to them, see you on the front page in a few years.
now, for the rest the slashdotters. stop with the internet of things, synergy of disruptive technology, cloud based "AAS" marketing hootenany and put the cool-aid back. These companies have no vested interest in anything but their shareholders. when Sergei buys a new island, when Tim buys a new ultra-yacht, when Satya or Ballmer or Gates or whoever runs the redmond money choo choo these days buys a new public school system and turns it into a mandatory code camp you can be sure they dont care about you or any of the products you use. Kindle, Nest, Facebook, and Google all exist solely to capitalize on your inability to understand your role as the product of these services, not the consumer. putting it "in the cloud" or buying into a "sharing economy" or whatever some ginned up marketing thirty-something spun across her blog is just fancy buzz jargon for giving up freedom.
You cant recall my books just because a publisher rubs you the wrong way, because they sit on my shelf after I buy them. You cant recall my email because some sender became non-commital about it, because it lives on my server now. And you can spin it all you want, but you cant do anything about the fact that I use a VPN and adblocker when I surf your "free" wireless. I dont get to experience your SRVFAIL redirection landing page because my DNS queries are my own. And until this cloud based abortion you call the future takes my rights and freedoms into consideration, I'll just exist as one more user you cant track, cant optimise, and wont target properly whos "experience" is "degraded" because I chose something besides serfdom on the internet I was promised would revolutionize the future youre slowly ruining.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Explain to me again why a home automation device that simply turns my lights on and off requires a company-owned server on the internet to operate?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Basically what I’m trying to say is read the fine print and check your entitlement. You chose to pay money for a product that was dependent on someone else’s charity to keep working.
The not-so-fine print at the time of purchase actually said "Free lifetime service subscription." That sure sounds like an a liability the parties would have had on their radar when valuing the acquisition. In fact, after the acquisition was complete, Nest reiterated the commitment: "For existing customers, the service will continue to be available and we will continue to offer customer support."
Reasonable people thus might well view the ongoing service as something more along the lines of a contractual obligation rather than an "entitlement" or "charity."