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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.
Based on my experience in a company that went on a shopping spree during the run up to the dot com bust, Google overpaid and Nest had unrealistic expectations.
Internet of Things - Devices to control your home.*
*As long as company doesn't brick your devices because they're too old.
a solution looking for a problem.. that causes other problems.
It was a solution for two problems:
.
1) how to gather information about the interior of people's houses
2) how to get people to install yet another advertisement screen in their houses.
To your point, the problem with Nest is that the solutions were not for problems that the people buying the device had, Nest was a solution to Nest's business partners' problems.
They released an overhyped thermostat. Google then spent 3.2 billion dollars... on a thermostat company.
Sure they had vague ambitions of a connected home that jived with IoT, but all the company had really gotten into the world was a damn thermostat that could connect to the internet.
No matter how good or bad that concept sounds, it was stupid to justify a 3.2 billion dollar investment on that one concrete thing.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I was all set to buy a couple of Nest devices for me house... right before Google purchased them.
I don't want a bunch of Google data gathering devices in my house.
I wouldn't say that was probably a common reaction, but I'm sure Google owning the company made other potential customers uneasy as well. If for no other reason than a company being bought means a device you buy may well have support yanked (as Google Nest did with one of the copies they acquired!).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
yep, some of us aren't so OCD that coming home to a too hot or cold home is a big deal. we tough it out for 30 minutes instead of turning the AC on remotely of having it run all day. this seems like a millennial product for the younger crowd who are still in their whiny everything must be perfect phase of their lives. us old people in the we're too cheap phase will tough it out and save the cash. and electricity isn't that expensive if you don't use a lot. in NYC my bill is like $70 most months unless it's a hot summer. i turn all the lights off, the TV, all the computers, nothing running or torrenting 24 hours a day, no SAN's or other geek nonsense sucking up electricity. absolutely no need for one of these gizmos or you buy a new home with all the energy efficiency bells and whistles so that this isn't a problem in the first place. and new homes already have automation options you can buy.
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.
That's the "D" (Differential) part of the "PID" (Proportional Integral Differential, or "Proportioner Integrator Differentiator") Algorithm that thermostats and heating/cooling plants have been using for, well, since there were mechanical thermostats with that strange little setting inside that was marked with "0.4, 0.6, 0.8..."
Look up "Heat Anticipator" sometime. Rate-of-Change when heating is NOT a novel concept. Far from it.
They haven't fucked anything up. No beta, they didn't remove the "use classic" link from that horrid mobile site, haven't caused any problems. What they have done so far is engaged with the community, solicited input, and made small improvements that don't cause any new problems.
If I thought any of the presidential candidates would do as well, I would have volunteered for their campaign. :)
Come to think of it, MANY people consider Bill Clinton the best recent president. Why, what did he do? Mostly he spent his time dealing with sex scandals. He didn't muck up the growing economy that he inherited or do anything else too bad. His wife spent 8 years as a senator and is now likely to become president. Why, what did she do in her 8 years in the senate? She sponsored a total of three bills in her eight years:
S. 3145: Name a road "Timothy J. Russert highway".
S. 3613: Name a post office the "Major George Quamo Post Office Building."
S. 1241: Designate a union building as a National Historic Site.
That's it, in eight years as a senator. Apparently that's a great senator, one who should perhaps be president. By this measure, Whiplash should at least be vice president.