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

uk.businessinsider.com

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

#221

Post by jdmichal »

simoncion wrote: post #175
rconti wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.

> If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Vivek "Vic" Gundotra did serious damage to Google's corporate image and was seriously reviled within Google, yet he stuck around for years . It's possible that Google upper management thinks that Fadell might be able to pull off a bet-the-company move. Gundotra was tasked with t…

> Or, it's possible that Google was contractually obligated to keep Gundotra around for a period of time, and is under the same obligation with Fadell.

I can't believe that they would have so much negotiating power that there's no way out for Google. Even if it's moving them to be the VP of janitor closets.

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

#223

Post by ocdtrekkie »

rconti wrote: post #157
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…

I know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.

Sundar Pichai still has a job.

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

#224

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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.

It needs to be understood that home automation appliances are going to be assumed to be long-life products. Nobody thinks about their light switch being an old version and needing to be replaced.

I'd say any home automation installer should be very wary of Silicon Valley-based automation "services", and focus on robust products which have been available for a long time.

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

#225

Post by spoinkaroo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #223
rconti wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.

Sundar Pichai still has a job.

What have you heard about Pichai?

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

#226

Post by spoinkaroo »

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…

Have you found an alternative product you prefer?

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

#227

Post by ocdtrekkie »

zeveb wrote: post #56

I think what users actually need is a smart home computer: one device, for the entire family, which provides sits on the Internet and provides secure access to home-network devices (e.g. security cameras, media players) and which gives easier-to-use (albeit perhaps less-secure) access to those things on the LAN. It could use containers to run blobs of code from different vendors. Given modern computing resources, it…

This is strongly what I've been advocating for. I use a desktop PC as my home automation controller at home. I feel that services like Sandstorm.io offer an amazing opportunity for self-hosted 'cloud services' in the future, and some of the good open source home automation software should replace what are currently cloud-based devices today.

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

#230

Post by gutnor »

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.

Home Automation is still niche. They probably hope to make up on the volume. It does not matter how badly they treat their current customer: if they find the iPhone of home automation, they will have hundred of millions of customers to make up for it.

They probably hope the guy will find the next big thing. That's more Google working internally as a VC in markets to be. Not that I think it is alright from such an established business like Google.

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