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Nest Is Done As a Standalone Alphabet Company, Merges With Google (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a shakeup at Nest today. Following previous rumors back in November, Google just announced Nest will no longer be a standalone Alphabet company; instead, it will merge with the Google hardware team. The current Nest CEO, Marwan Fawaz, will report to Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh. Google's blog post says the merger will allow it to "combine hardware, software, and services" between the two companies, which are all "built with Google's artificial intelligence and the Assistant at the core." Nest and Google have been growing closer together even without this merger, with Nest getting a spot at the "Made By Google" Pixel 2 launch event to tout Nest and Google Assistant integration. An earlier report from The Wall Street Journal said that Google and Nest already combined their supply chain teams in 2016. While Google has focused on making the "Google" brand well known in the hardware world with the Pixel phones and Google Home, CNET reports that Google won't be dumping the Nest brand.
The point is that Alphabet absorbs the risky propositions, and allows them to cut off money to them if the risk doesn't pan out, while google remains an isolated profit making group that is insulated from risk.
What's the point of this whole Alphabet thing if they're just going to start merging companies into Google anyway...
Synergies?
When possible Google wants to split off companies as much as possible to avoid anti-trus^H^H^H^H to let each independent company focus on it's own product.
But for something like Nest they probably think it can benefit from really close integration with Google's other services.
I stole this Sig
Over the next 3-5 years, every other Alphabet "company" will merge with Google. Then Alphabet itself will rebrand as Google.
#DeleteChrome
I just don't get it. It's a thermostat. I feel like the nest is Lil' Sebastian and I'm Ben Wyatt.
So for this merger - did the risk pay out or are they are recycling the scraps?
4wdloop
The same thing is it every day Pinky!
It's BETA AND UNSUPPORTED UNTIL WE KILL IT!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The point is that Alphabet absorbs the risky propositions, and allows them to cut off money to them if the risk doesn't pan out, while google remains an isolated profit making group that is insulated from risk.
You take pictures of dessert with an Android phone, or get into a Waymo car, and your Nest thermostat will know that you're coming home and adjust the temperature for you.
It's both genius (they/'ve perfected the programmable thermostat like the way a PVR has perfected the VCR) and scary, given the building damage it could cause if it were hacked or crash-prone and caused frozen pipes.
I recently posted about how to install an old thermostat in parallel with the new programmable one, just to keep it as a backup.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That all seems harder to setup then connecting two wires to a thermostat that does it for me. For one thing, a multi stage boiler would be far more expensive a retrofit than a thermostat, sure, a variable power boiler would be cool.
A multistage boiler would be nice.... but no point until you need to replace it (and even then, only if your fuel costs justify the added expense over the life of the unit).
A 1987 Honeywell Chronotherm programmable thermostat (probably still works!) will learn, over a few days to weeks, how long it takes to heat or cool your home. You set the temperature you want when you get home at 5:PM, and it will average out the time it took to heat or cool the home, so it will figure out to turn on the AC at 3:45PM and the heat at 4:15PM.
This technology has been used in the HVAC industry for decades now.
I suppose instead of controlling the boiler fire, you could control the water temperature,
Which is the idea of a multistage boiler...
but again, that's a pretty expensive retro fit to gravity fed system.
And won't work, gravity fed water systems and octopus hot air systems only work by the temperature gradient, the working fluid has to be hot enough to rise, and as it cools down, becomes dense enough to sink back down. It's a chimney.
Unless you add a pump (hot water) or a fan (octopus/gravimetric furnace like in the basement of Home Alone), your heat won't create enough draft to get distributed throughout your home. Your boiler or furnace would end up cycling constantly but the radiators/floor vents would remain cool.
I'm actually not aware of any boilers that work by controlling the water temperature and pumping continuously (for a small home), generally they heat the water to whatever, and pump it until it's whatever - 20 degrees,heating it again then. But if the thermostat tells it to go off, they stop pumping (and heating).
Why they didn't use systems like that I don't know, I'm also upset that most American systems I've seen don't have room thermostats on each radiator, but that's life.
With the Nest, I can sleep with the house in the low 60s and still wake up to the high 60s, before nest, it could take anywhere from an hour to three (depending on outside temperature) to get to the upper 60s.
In most parts of North America, we have a more extreme climate than in most parts of Europe and the rest of the world. I live in Ottawa, Canada. It was -30C for our first week in January, -40C equivalent when you factor in how fast the wind cools warm objects like people and houses.... and it easily reaches over 30C every summer.
Our HVAC systems are pretty robust. You have an old house with a gravimetric system. You cannot have multistage (though you did just reinvent it) without finding some way to replace convection with a pump or fan.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
I wish they (Honeywell) advertised it more heavily on the package, perhaps I could have saved hundreds.
I replaced a $50 or so programmable with the nest, it did not vary heat up time with outside temperature (an hour swing day to day, new windows are next, but cost more than a thermostat), and it did not cut off a few degrees (and much time) before the desired temperature knowing that having all of the radiators fully hot will lead to another hour or so of heating even with the boiler off.
Any of the thermostats I'd used in the past (all of the places I've lived had large free standing radiators) didn't really get those two concepts (start heating hours early, and cut off an hour or so early). Though, it's not even something I knew existed until nest advertised it pretty front and center. So maybe it was in the small print of things I was looking at.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I have a $50 Cadet electric heater in every room... what's the point of putting a $200 thermostat on each one? You don't need to put a user interface on every device -- everybody already has a user interface in their pocket, it's called a "smart phone"!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you really want to save money on energy, give me servos to open my windows when it's hotter inside than outside in the summer, or colder inside than outside in the winter.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.