Nest's Time At Alphabet: A 'Virtually Unlimited Budget' With No Results (arstechnica.com)

Ron Amadeo, reporting for Ars Technica (edited and condensed): Nest CEO Tony Fadell wasn't officially "fired" from Nest, but it certainly feels like it. In just the last few months, Nest has had to deal with reports of an "employee exodus," a string of public insults from Dropcam co-founder and departing Nest employee Greg Duffy, news that even Google supposedly didn't want to work with Nest on a joint project, and fallout from the company's decision to remotely disable Nest's deprecated Revolv devices. [...] It's hard to argue with the decision to "transition" Fadell away from Nest. When Google bought Nest in January 2014, the expectation was that a big infusion of Google's resources and money would supercharge Nest. Nest grew from 280 employees around the time of the Google acquisition to 1200 employees today. In Nest's first year as "a Google company," it used Google's resources to acquire webcam maker Dropcam for $555 million, and it paid an unknown amount for the smart home hub company Revolv. Duffy said Nest was given a "virtually unlimited budget" inside Alphabet. In return for all this investment, Nest delivered very little. Two-and-a-half years under Google/Alphabet, a quadrupling of the employee headcount, and half-a-billion dollars in acquisitions yielded minor yearly updates and a rebranded device. That's all.

Comments

This is what happens when you have

[bravecanadian]

a solution looking for a problem.. that causes other problems.

Re:This is what happens when you have

[RatPh!nk]

In terms of energy efficiency, it is smart. The rate at which your house warms and cools, especially as a function of outside temperature, is a much better algorithm for controlling a heating and cooling system. However, I admit even as a gadget geek with some superfluous income it just isn't $250 cool, to me. Purely a values thing. I'd definitely be in for $150, maybe at $200. Price point is just off for what it does.

Re:This is what happens when you have

[green1]

My house is very unpredictably empty. But I've also seen nothing to indicate that Nest can handle that any better than my existing "dumb" thermostat.
It can only detect people if they walk near the thermostat (which is in an upstairs hallway that I don't walk by very often), it can guess at schedules, but I can guarantee it can't guess at ours. I could manually program a schedule in to it, but it would always be wrong, and It would be just as easy to manually adjust the thermostat each time.

Now if they implemented something that looked at multiple google calendars, and assumed that if there was nothing scheduled on any of them that there'd be someone home, then it would be useful, but right now it only works if your house is PREDICTABLY empty.

Re:This is what happens when you have

[b0bby]

I have both a Nest and an ecobee; can't remember which one, but one of the two had a setting where it would switch to resistant heat instead of the heat pump if the internet reported temp outside was below ~32 degrees. I noticed the aux heat was coming on too much and found and changed that setting. I could see how that could add a good amount to your bill for sure.

Re:This is what happens when you have

[TheInternetGuy]

"D" (Derivative) , because letters and stuff

Re:Job security

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Has the buying out of a smaller company EVER resulted in a better product for the consumer?

Well, I don't know. Was pre-Google Android any good? Were there many devices with it for you to buy?