Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#131

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #74

mhurron wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion I basically say the same thing about every 'smart home' device. I would love to be able to query my thermostat to find out when and how long it turned the heat/AC on and whatnot, but I only want it to talk to my local wifi and devices. I don't want it to use a cloud servic…

There are plenty of smart home devices that work without any form of internet connection. Have been for 20+ years, too.

There's "smart", as defined 20 years ago...which is timers, complex schedules, etc. And, then there's "smart" as we define it today, which is WiFi, browser or app-based UI, etc. I'm unaware of a Nest competitor that is not tied to the cloud-based service of the provider. I am not super attuned to the market, however. Things have likely (hopefully) changed since last I researched things like Nest a year or two ago.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#132

Post by mikestew » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

I wish Synology would get on the stick and and make/acquire a Dropcam-like device for their NAS products. Why would Synology, a maker of mass storage appliances, head off to the topsy-turvy world of consumer products? Look at their software offerings that run on their hardware. DS Note, an Evernote/OneNote competitor? They have put a non-trivial amount of work to produce it, and it's good enough I use it in lieu of aforementioned products. Does it sell more NAS products? Dunno, I'm assuming it must. I just know that all of my notes stay on a machine that I own. That machine is five or six years old, and Sinology continues to crank out updates for it. When they stop, my box will still work.

DS Note is just one example, there's buttloads of software that Synology cranks out for these little boxes, including security cam software. Problem is, tracking down which camera works with the NAS is non-trivial, and frankly more trouble than I care to expend. Now if Synology said, "here's a $200 camera. Point it at your NAS. All data stays on your local network, no 'cloud' services to rely on. Sorted.", I'd buy four of them that same day, no questions asked, shut up and take my money.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#133

Post by mrweasel » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

frandroid wrote: post #45

ars wrote: post #22

Very cutesy title, but a very poor title. This is why I refuse to buy any 3rd party internet connected (I mean connects to a 3rd party, not just TCP/IP) appliance unless I can install anything I want on it. It doesn't matter if internet connectivity is required or optional - if I'm not in charge of the software on it, and it connects to a 3rd party I refuse to buy it. I have a feeling more and more people will refuse…

Nice for you to say as a developer, but not every customer cares about this. I mean of course one should be able to flash new firmware. But more importantly people like Google shouldn't brick devices the customer has bought, whether they can be flashed with a new / alt firmware or not.

>but not every customer cares about this

They also don't care about your company not wanting to support a 10 year old device anymore. They bought and paid for a device and they will expect it to work until it dies or they choose to replace it. In this case it will die, but not because it's broken.

Devices like the Nest, TVs, refrigerators and so on are still expected to last many many more years than something like phones and I don't think a company like Google is capable of committing to something that long term.

The alternative to not make that long term commitment is to design devices that work without a hosted service.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#134

Post by josh2600 » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

fezz wrote: post #53

jimrandomh wrote: post #41

This is neither the first time Google's done something like this to customers, nor the first time Tony Fadell has been directly involved. When they pulled Google Glass from the market, it was concurrent with moving the Glass team to Fadell's leadership. They didn't go quite so far as to push an update to brick devices, but they left the software in a broken state, and refused to open source their fork of Android so u…

They can easily fix this. If they don't, it speaks volumes about how Nest/Google/Alphabets values customer relationships. Take all the other google services and imagine what would happen if google were just as reckless, especially with long life products like home installed devices. Home automation installation services or even contractors would also be cautious about Nest.

Empathy is not a core competency of google as an enterprise.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#135

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #65

ceejayoz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for borrowers with poor credit who explicitly agree to such a thing as a condition of getting a car loan, though.

For now. But if most lenders require this you couldn't have much of an option to say no. They always test things like this with the market most easily exploited. Reminds me of prepaid gas and water meters in the UK. They started out only doing them for those who missed payments or had poor credit, but now they're everywhere. Most new homes get a prepay meter which they can wirelessly disconnect.

> Most new homes get a prepay meter which they can wirelessly disconnect.

I'm really not clear on why this is insidious. A utility worker has the legal right to come shut it off, why shouldn't they be able to do it remotely?

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#136

Post by shlant » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

mrexroad wrote: post #61

SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I bought a Dropcam when they were a new thing. When I realized they did literally everything via a cloud service and would be a brick without that service, I was furious. The incredible arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion, was astonishing to me. I still can't believe something like Dropcam is such a huge succe…

counter point: i pre-ordered dropcam for the reason that it was limited to cloud-use only. I wanted something dead simple to use so my wife / house sitter / etc could easily move it as needed, we had access anywhere without configuration, and devops/it being handled by someone else incase i'm not around. Classifying their cloud-only product design decision as "incredible arrogance" quite a stretch... if anything, sou…

> I figured by the time the product was "bricked" (e.g. company going bust, product end-of-life, etc), that the hardware would be so out of date that it'd be time to replace it anyway

How "out of date" can a simple webcam get? Not to the point of it not still being useful I would think. And the decision of hardware still being useful/usable should be the users choice, not the manufacturer.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#137

Post by fucking_tragedy » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

fezz wrote: post #53

jimrandomh wrote: post #41

This is neither the first time Google's done something like this to customers, nor the first time Tony Fadell has been directly involved. When they pulled Google Glass from the market, it was concurrent with moving the Glass team to Fadell's leadership. They didn't go quite so far as to push an update to brick devices, but they left the software in a broken state, and refused to open source their fork of Android so u…

They can easily fix this. If they don't, it speaks volumes about how Nest/Google/Alphabets values customer relationships. Take all the other google services and imagine what would happen if google were just as reckless, especially with long life products like home installed devices. Home automation installation services or even contractors would also be cautious about Nest.

I see it as an extension of their consumer software policy.

Have little to no customer service, even when money is involved, letting products stagnate for years and frequently pulling the plug on services.

Which is scary, because this hardware is dependent on Google-owned software and services.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#138

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #77

SwellJoe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the Dropcam fiasco, I wondered if there would be a market for secure smart devices with an open API. To me, it's an obvious benefit and one that I would buy (whereas I won't buy the cloud-based devices of this sort), but I suspect the ease of use of something like Dropcam trumps all of the other considerations. I even considered doing a Kickstarter to build something in that space; the technical side, both hard…

I haven't tried it personally but I know a few people who think highly of SmartThings [1], which is a relatively open platform. I've also experimented with Raspberry Pis. However, to be honest, there are a fairly limited number of "smart" things I can do around my house which would be genuinely useful. [1] http://developer.smartthings.com/

That does look promising. It's kinda hard to tell how SmartThings all fits together with devices and what level of control consumers actually have, but, the word "open" appears a lot in their copy.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#139

Post by dheera » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

I think this is an inherent problem of the design of hardware-software-cloud combined products. Forget Google for a second; what if this was a startup that simply ran out of money and shut down? They wouldn't have money to run their servers, and the software portion that relies on servers would necessarily fail with the company's loss of funds. What are you going to do, ask the founders and investors to support server costs out of their pockets post-shutdown?

Google isn't any different; they have the right to pull the plug on server-side stuff and make whatever budget cuts they need to make in order to keep their company running and keep their shareholders happy. It might affect customer relations. You might choose not to buy their products again. But they have that right.

They can also choose to continue to keep the service running at a loss in order to keep customer relations happy for future products, and build a good reputation. They would have to weigh the pros and cons of this, given that the number of Nest users is miniscule compared to other Google products. It's their decision.

Keep this in mind when buying any hardware that comes with a cloud-based software component. You also have the choice not to buy such products.

On another note, I have my thermostat controlled by an Arduino and web interface run on a Raspberry Pi. It's not going to be shut down any time soon.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#140

Post by ageitgey » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I bought a Dropcam when they were a new thing. When I realized they did literally everything via a cloud service and would be a brick without that service, I was furious. The incredible arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion, was astonishing to me. I still can't believe something like Dropcam is such a huge succe…

> I still can't believe something like Dropcam is such a huge success. The level of security awareness the general public has is terrifyingly small

I think you are totally misjudging this market. To the average person, a Dropcam is empirically far more secure in practice than many alternatives have proven to be. It's certainly what I'd recommend to a friend.

A few years ago, Foscam Wifi cameras were popular with parents. You could buy one for This led to numerous articles like this one[3] telling parents to update passwords, disable UPnP, tweak router settings, update firmware, etc, to prevent future hacks. But to a parent who's baby was woken up in the middle of the night by a hacker, they are probably just going to throw the hacked camera in the trash.

By comparison, Dropcam is a totally integrated solution that requires no user-initiated updates, no network configuration and is backed by the reputation of Google. To the average parent that doesn't want to spend their life reading Foscam forums, that's a much more attractive solution and much less likely to get hacked due to not being updated or properly configured and secured.

Dropcam/Nest/Google produces a product that works really well right out of the box with almost zero configuration and is relatively secure. The non-cloud alternatives do not. Until someone offers a solution that "just works" like Dropcam, consumers will keep opting for the cloud-based solution.

Yes, it sucks for electronic freedom. But that's not the main feature that matters to the market.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/13/how-a-cre... [2] http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/01/bug-exposes-ip-cameras-ba... [3] http://www.brockthompson.com/blog/3-ways-protect-foscam-hack...