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Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

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Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#561
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to strip your thermostats off the wall. The best is still to not buy any device that is meant to last more than 5y that relies on a service.

You say that as if it's hard to remove.

There are a lot of people who are going to own nest devices that they had professionally installed, as many of these purchases push for using an on-site technician service to install for you (try buying any of the smart thermostats on Amazon, they all have an option for professional installation).

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if it's hard to remove.

It can be hard especially if you don't have a replacement just lying around.

A replacement compatible with the heating that may have been installed 10 years ago by a company that went out of business and from a manufacturer that also went out of business.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#563
post #342
post #66

I used to be a fan of Google. They were the good ones, the open ones. Ha! I’ve feel like they played the long sucker game. How times have changed. Even Android feels like a ruse. And Chrome. And maps. The last thing will be search. At some point it’ll be curated for my own good. To be fair, Everyone has to make a living, but be honest don’t take people for suckers of make them into suckers.

I agree. I used to be a fan. They were explicitly not evil, gave lots of open source stuff away for free, made lots of other free services. Turns out they were just making us dependent on them, and now that they've got us, they do whatever they want. We need to make ourselves less dependent on Google. Move away from GMail, use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, OSM, federated social networks, etc. I don't have a good replacement f…

LineageOS [0] is also worth a look, it's like Android without all the un-uninstallable Google spyware. No play services, no need to log in to a G account to use the device, no G apps (but you can install them separately if desired), no background data harvesting, etc.

The open source MicroG project [1] takes things a step further by acting as a drag-and-drop replacement for Google Play Services. It provides a FOSS location provider backend, allows the device passes SafetyNet checks (Snapchat/Pokemon Go/online banking), and generally makes for a seamless mobile experience.

I've been using both for ~6 months now and the only noticeable difference is GPS taking a few seconds longer to get a satellite lock. Definitely worth a shot if you're interested in de-googling your Android.

[0] https://www.lineageos.org/

[1] https://lineage.microg.org/

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard for me to buy into the idea that allowing a company to launch a product with a given feature hampers technological development. Requiring that a company runs an API forever if a product depends on it (and commit to refunds if that doesn't work out) seems like it would raise the barrier of entry to release such products, thus resulting in fewer products in this space (especially from smaller companies). That…

The product could be "a thermostat that works until 2021" though, then companies wouldn't be hamstrung with supporting old devices beyond the promises they'd made? Like giving a warranty, or making a parts/repair promise. I'd like to see something like a requirement to publish interoperability details, or code that runs on a major OS that operates as a server, to facilitate long term user-led support, too.

Laying all my cards on the table I'm kind of ideologically opposed to a 300 million person government forcing any regulations whatsoever upon the entire population rather than allowing for local control of laws, but if I were to put myself in the shoes of someone who accepted the basic premises of American society I would see your proposed minimum EOL statement as a totally reasonable consumer protection rule with relatively little burden on the seller. This isn't what I took the other posters in this thread to be proposing, though, and I still think it would have a slight hampering effect on technological innovation (going back to GGP's argument)[0], I can just see arguing that this would be worth the consumer protection provided.

The requirement to publish interoperabilty-details/code/etc. is something I see as far more burdensome, perhaps in some cases to the point of being impractical, which is sad because I actually value these properties quite highly. I don't own any products that rely on the API of a specific company to continue functioning, and as an individual consumer I reward companies that do release such details (albeit in a statistically insignificant way). The simple, obvious reason that this is burdensome is because the release of code helps competitors, and requiring a company to help competitors makes it more likely that they will decide to invest in some less-regulated industry instead. There's a logical reason that most software companies aren't open-sourcing their products, unfortunately. Also, and I disagree with this yet don't want to force my opinions of the world on other peoples' infosec decisions, some people argue that closed source software is more secure than open source software due to security through obscurity. More rarely, I can imagine edge-case IoT devices that rely on highly specific infrastructure where interoperability just isn't reasonable, and the question of which layer interoperability should be provided on is non-obvious. Imagine if SpaceX launched a swarm of satellites measuring some data about the Martian atmosphere and released a product that could tell you the measurements when asked. Do they need to provide the details of the API between the product and the Earth-based relay? Do they need to provide the details of the connection between the Earth-based relay and the Martian satellite swarm? Do they need to provide the details of the internals of the satellites themselves? What if they're the only company anywhere near being able to supply this service, and the technology will almost certainly be obsolete by the time another company manages to launch a Martian satellite swarm? I feel like this probably isn't the best example, but there might be better examples I'm too dumb to think of at the moment, and not at least considering those known-unknown potential scenarios might be harmful to society as a whole (but I think I've articulated this last point worse than the rest of my comment, and I'm not entirely convinced of it myself).

[0]Edit: on further thought, this hampering effect should only really exist if there is a minimum time from date-of-sale that the minimum EOL must extend to; if I can meet the requirements while selling a product that is only guaranteed to work until yesterday then it shouldn't have any real effect other than consumer awareness, but it also kind of takes the teeth out of the proposal.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#565
post #22

> I’m a Works with Nest developer. Will I be able to access and control Nest devices moving forward? > No. The Actions on Google Smart Home platform does not provide open API access to Nest devices, so it cannot be used to access and control Nest devices. Instead, managing and controlling Google Home, Nest, and thousands of third-party smart home devices is done through the Google Home app and the Google Assistant. W…

But isn't this the risk you take when you build on anyone else's platform?

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#566

Questions I won't get answers to, but about which I'm curious anyway: 1. How many end-users are affected? 2. How many devs are affected? 3. What is the annual transaction volume that is affected? Depending on the magnitude of the answers to these questions, I can see turning this API off being either a good thing or a bad thing. If hundreds of users are affected, well. Sad, but sometimes unpopular things get turned o…

This is the API that Alexa integration works through, so I imagine it is a pretty large number.

[deleted]

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#568
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, they just did a Twitter. I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large ecosystem where there isn't an alignment of clear economic interest. Google of all people doing this just made it tougher for everyone else to maintain confidence in large vendor platforms.

It's worse than Twitter. Twitter made a strategic decision (correct or not) that applied across their entire business. Google are making this decision and calculating or hoping that it's in isolation from the rest of their business. That really doesn't seem to be the case. For the rest of their business' life, Google APIs will be met with skepticism about their long-term prospects. That sucks, because it doesn't seem…

I've already held that opinion of Google products for some time after seeing what a ghost town Sites and Docs are, and the shutdowns of Reader, G+, Wave, etc. At best it seems that you can count on a product silently losing support for years as a hint that you should migrate.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#569
I thought about buying a thermostat for my district heating radiators. But for the time being I just manage with a cheap thermometer and regulating the radiator manually, because they already have a crude thermostat. It works quite good, because weather is not changing as fast day to day and heating season is not very long.

Many times more technology equals more nuisance.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#570

> One developer platform. We want to unify our efforts around third-party connected home devices under a single developer platform – a one-stop shop for both our developers and our customers to build a more helpful home. To accomplish this, we’ll be winding down Works with Nest on August 31, 2019, and delivering a single unified experience through the Works with Google Assistant program. > One set of privacy commitme…

Read upthread, but lots of control appears to be lost - some estimated 90% of programatic control. Grab your pitchfork :)
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