For me this is also a major failure of poor competition policy.
If Google's smart home system were an independent company, it would love or die by its ability to do its job. But Nest can just piggy back on Google's brand power.
I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
51–60 of 356 posts
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#52I can't understand people that want to wire up every aspect of their home to big tech cloud companies. There are plenty of options for self-hosted smart home setups.
When I realized I need to register all my light bulbs and appliances and control them by janky wireless signals, with reconnect issues from time to time, I just gave up and use physical switches. They work all the time. Why would I want to open or close a light when I am 100 steps away from the button?
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#53I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…
I feel like it's not only products that get left behind once Google gets bored.
Many of Google's software eventually get worse too. YouTube for example has killed most of their social features by removing dislikes, limited searchability of videos by channel, allowed bots to fill the comments. And Google search has so much malware in their ads that pop up first, that even govts are recommending ad blockers by default.
Such a pity, Google used to be the most respected of the SV big tech.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#54The author mentioned they would be moving towards local smart-home solution but doesn’t mention HomeAssistant even once https://www.home-assistant.io/
That's presumably because HA is categorically outside the author's field of view, not being a branded corporate plug'n'play product with a marketing budget, but open-source with "DIY" in the first paragraph on the page.
I don't think the author is interested in providing alternative solutions at all. This article reads like a cry for attention directed at Google and no one else.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#55It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini speakers I use at home has become amusingly bad: not that it doesn’t understand what I want, but it will often just not execute my orders, despite understanding. For example, it recently ignores my “yes” to its “do you want to know more?” follow up questions.…
Maybe instead of hoping for a lawsuit just stop buying shit google makes. They’ve repeatedly dropped whole product lines on short notice, and even the Android phones they have produced have sometimes had pathetically short supported lives.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#56While touring the house we eventually bought, my wife spied a Nest on the wall and said, "Oh, that's one thing bitwize is gonna want to rip out." Hooking your home up to the cloud and depending on cloud services for its operation just strikes me as the king of dumb ideas. You've got private, intimate data flowing to who knows where, cloud malfunctions affecting regular home operations (this has already happened at le…
Jup. A family member has Nest thermostats. Server went down. The thermostats cranked up to 30C / 86F as the failure mode. Just makes no sense. I get that you don’t want freezing pipes, if the server goes down, but come on.
That sounds a bit far fetched to me, I have had my Internet go down multiple times and never have a Nest problem. In fact I don’t even think an Internet connection is required if you just want it to be a dumb thermostat.
The default safety settings on my nest is 45F for heat and 95F for AC. This setting is user adjustable so maybe your family member override it.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#57While touring the house we eventually bought, my wife spied a Nest on the wall and said, "Oh, that's one thing bitwize is gonna want to rip out." Hooking your home up to the cloud and depending on cloud services for its operation just strikes me as the king of dumb ideas. You've got private, intimate data flowing to who knows where, cloud malfunctions affecting regular home operations (this has already happened at le…
I was amazed - in a bad way - when we were looking into getting solar for our home and almost all of the systems relied on some kind of mobile app for their UI, often via a cloud service. These are systems that should have a working life of decades ! What mobile or cloud platform today will even still be here and fully compatible in ten years? Want to bet tens of thousands on that?! (Plus of course all the usual "sma…
99% of solar/battery systems will work just fine with no internet connection.
In fact often the internet connectivity is a separate plug-in module you can just not install.
Loads of these devices get installed into garages and suchlike where the wifi is no good, so most installers will know that their systems can work without internet connectivity and will be used to installing them that way.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#58I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…
Same happened to me with investing in the Fitbit ecosystem. Hope they don't botch Reminders next with their migrations to Tasks
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#59I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…
I feel like it's not only products that get left behind once Google gets bored. Many of Google's software eventually get worse too. YouTube for example has killed most of their social features by removing dislikes, limited searchability of videos by channel, allowed bots to fill the comments. And Google search has so much malware in their ads that pop up first, that even govts are recommending ad blockers by default.…
I had to delete the YouTube app simply because there was no way to disable Shorts. Those things are hopelessly addictive and unavoidable. If I wanted shorts, I'd install TikTok.
Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again
#60It is only a matter of time before a class action is filed against Google for reducing the functionality of products they previously sold. The Assistant in Mini speakers I use at home has become amusingly bad: not that it doesn’t understand what I want, but it will often just not execute my orders, despite understanding. For example, it recently ignores my “yes” to its “do you want to know more?” follow up questions.…
The old Google Mini don't even connect to the Google Home app anymore, which is necessary to chain it to Wifi connection. For a <5 year old product - that's unacceptable