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Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

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Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#141

Post by optymizer »

dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

I, for one, am enjoying my 'smart home' setup, where I can say "Alexa, turn off the TV", "Alexa, turn on Chromecast" and "Alexa, set the bedroom temperature to 72", regardless of which floor of the house I'm on.

I'd rather fiddle with updates and setup once in a while (I have never had to reconfigure the devices in 2 years), than look for that goddamn remote between couch cushions, press the power button and possibly switch audio and video inputs, especially if I'm on the second floor and someone forgot the TV on on the first floor. I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#142

Post by NotPaidToPost »

scarface74 wrote: post #80
NotPaidToPost wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they had a shot. It seems to me that they had managed to effectively own the top end segment of the home thermostat market in term of branding and product recognition. I don't see why that wouldn't have enabled a profitable, sustainable company. The thing is that these days people start this kind of company with their exit in mind from day one.

How sustainable? There are only three ways to sell a thermostat. - at the time a home is being built when it’s easy to get all sorts of add ons bundle through the builder. How many homes are being built in a year? - as a self service after market upgrade to your existing thermostat. In the grand scheme of things, how many people are willing to do that? -working with service companies or building out a network of inst…

Plenty of thermostats are sold per year. Certainly enough to sustain the many existing vendors.

E.g. I'm in the UK. There are 25 million homes here and pretty much every home has a thermostat. If I assume that a thermostat lasts 20 years so that about 5% must be replaced in a given year that means a market of 1.25 million thermostats every year. Every DIY and plumbing supplies shop sells thermostats, so they must sell.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#143

Post by adrianmonk »

scarface74 wrote: post #29

In what world could Nest have been a profitable ongoing concern without being acquired by someone? It’s hard enough going from startup to either IPO or a self sustainable “lifestyle business” for a software company. It’s almost impossible for a hardware company - see Eero.

I don't think the fact that they got acquired necessarily tells you that much about whether they would have been profitable on their own.

Probably internet of things is a game Google don't want to be left out of, so they acquired one of the leaders. If this is the case, then it leaves open the possibility that Nest had a choice between profitable and more profitable.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#144

Post by JorgeGT »

scarface74 wrote: post #22
stirkac wrote: post #6

This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.

Or end up like people investing in “smart homes” in the 90s. Remember when built in intercom systems in the home were considered advanced? http://mentalfloss.com/article/510559/what-smart-home-techno...

They had quite advanced smart homes back in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHIknNa6Eg (and to Nest shame, they still service it! http://unitysystemshomemanager.com/)

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#145

Post by [deleted] »

hunter2_ wrote: post #96
rch wrote: post #86

> Google's smart home strategy will now revolve around only the "Works with Google Assistant" program This arguably makes more sense anyway, and I think it opens up some interesting possibilities that might not have been possible while Nest was a standalone entity.

Works With Nest means arbitrary third parties having API access to a Nest device. Any person could make a dev account and start logging data, sending commands, etc. Works With Google Assistant means Google (and in this case, only Google, given the WwN sunset) having API access to whatever device, in this case a Nest device. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#146

Post by ben_w »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #129
dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

If I had a 100k cinema room ... I would ask myself some hard questions about my priorities in life.

If you were a billionaire, and 100k was 0.01% of your net worth? If someone owned a €300k home with neither mortgage nor investments, that’s the equivalent of €30.

I’m may not be impressed with their blasé attitude to money, but I bet I looked more wasteful than that to a Nairobi friend of my partner when I visited on a plane ticket that cost half their annual rent, £350.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#147

Post by donatj »

nine_k wrote: post #89
zelly wrote: post #46

We are all used to SaaS randomly getting obsoleted, but when you buy a physical device you kind of expect to own it forever. But no, cloud and IoT means even your physical stuff are SaaS products. Just stop buying the trash.

Can't help but quote: «“the "Internet of Things" won't work until the "Local Area Network of Things" works», seen here on HN [1]. There's significantly less money in it, though, and more hassle. It's not going to become popular enough until people get burned enough with vendors going out of business, or just stopping support, and making their convenient $199 gadgets obsolete. In a sense, a large company like Nest pul…

LIFX bulbs work without the need to connect to the internet. They have a LAN protocol that's pretty easy to use.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#148

Post by dgzl »

AlexandrB wrote: post #120
dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

> It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems. This. Every time I hear a friend or someone on a podcast talking about their smart home they talk about how…

I had a very high maintenance roommate and friend who is really into the easy smart-home devices. My understanding is he just likes the world to bend to his will as he maneuvers around in life. The doors unlock automatically, Nest changes our home temperatures as we walk in, "hey Siri, change lights to dance party", "play top radio". "What's the news today".

Even though he earned a degree in computer science, he wasn't very interested in the hacker/tinker/development side of things.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#149

Post by kyllo »

dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

It's sad because the concept of IoT in the home has such great potential, but the execution so far has just been atrocious.

https://twitter.com/internetofshit

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#150

Post by gambiting »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #129
dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

If I had a 100k cinema room ... I would ask myself some hard questions about my priorities in life.

It's a sort of thing that you build when money is meaningless. And at that point you can still have very valid priorities - helping other people out, setting up charities, etc etc. Your house just happens to have a cinema room - it's no different "luxury" than having underfloor heating in your bathroom. It's comparably unnecessary, just on a different financial scale.
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