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

Job security

[The-Ixian]

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

Cheaper, maybe... but almost certainly more diluted as creative control and vision is coopted/usurped.

Re:Job security

[MachineShedFred]

Yes.

Apple purchased PA Semi, and now they have their own line of system-on-chip computers that have pushed other semiconductor and device manufacturers to constantly increase performance to compete.

Purchasing PA Semi lead directly to the Apple A4 chip and it's successors, which led directly to Qualcomm, TI, and Samsung making better ARM chips to compete.

Nest temperature display is backwards

[paulpach]

I have a Nest thermostat. It displays in large the temperature you set it to instead of the current room temperature. What the actual fuck? A mercury thermometer is smarter than this.

There was a feature request for this opened in 2013, it has 1683 votes and its the third most popular feature request. You would think that even an entry level programmer would be able to fix that or add an option, but no, the feature has been completely ignored for years and contacting support about it only gives the reply "keep voting for it", even though that is clearly going to /dev/null. The other popular features request are equally ignored.

I am very frustrated by the complete lack of support these devices have. The entire community web site is nothing more than a pacifier for nest owners.

Re:Nest temperature display is backwards

[TheGratefulNet]

are you serious - they only show the SET value and not the ACTUAL current value? no option to set the default large text for the one you want? not a split display, even?

laughable, if that's really true.

I don't expect much from google, though. they mark serious bugs as 'wontfix' and nothing will change their minds.

they are all a lost cause.

Google's tactics.

[sshir]

I think Google buys all those companies just to acquire talent. Google is famous for rather hardnosed/pragmatic approach to managing it's workforce. Such an approach successfully weeds out bullshit artists (e.g. Marissa Mayer). Unfortunately this approach also fairly harsh on true visionaries.
Apparently Google thinks that because bullshit artists outnumber visionaries as 1000 to 1, it's an acceptable loss.
And to compensate for this they simply wait for other companies to cultivate the talent and then swoop in.

Re:Google's tactics.

[Cochonou]

Marissa Mayer worked for 13 years at Google. Could you please elaborate on how their management approach "successfully weeds out bullshit artists" in her case ?

Fell for the hype, sold after 1 year

[trout007]

I live in Florida so I liked the idea of a learning thermostat to save some money. Instead what I figured out (and should have known ahead of time) is that it is just better to keep the setpoint constant. Sure I saved $10/mo but the house was always muggy and uncomfortable. Part of the reason is I have a high efficiency A/C so when I keep the setpoint constant it just runs the low speed compressor and fan and keeps the house cool and dry. When the nest shut everything down to save energy when we returned it had to kick on the high speed to get back to temperature. I'd gladly pay $10/mo for a comfortable house and less wear and tear on my $10k A/C unit.

Re:This is what happens when you have

[MachineShedFred]

Other competitors have solved most of those problems, specifically Ecobee with their remote sensors that you can put in different rooms. You can then set schedules that ignore some sensors at certain times - for example, I don't really care what the temperature is in my office when I'm in my bedroom sleeping, so pay no attention to that.

The remote sensors also have movement sensing too, so you don't have to walk past the thermostat, but any sensor that you can put wherever you please. They've also integrated with IFTTT to allow smartphone geolocation services.

Nest may have been first, but they've done jack shit with that lead and now they're last.