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Am I the only one who thought "well, good for the Nest guys" followed by "too bad, it looked like a good product"?
I'm trying to think of a tech acquisition that was favorable, or at the very least not unfavorable for the consumer. It seems like tech (maybe all ) acquisitions almost always favor the buyer and not the consumer. Does anybody have any good examples?
What possible consumer benefit could that indirection have?
edit: The reason I ask is that I'm trying to figure out why an exact copy of Nest except that it didn't leak data and didn't require other people's servers to work wouldn't eat Nest's lunch.
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Nest really isn't great for that either, aside from what I'd call an adaptive timer based on how you adjust it. But if you have access to someone's live power usage, you probably have a good idea of their schedule. On top of that, your phone makes a much better tracker than your thermostat.
> Nest really isn't great for that either, aside from what I'd call an adaptive timer based on how you adjust it. What about the auto-away feature?
Your phone makes a much better tracker for such things.
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? Only if you're incapable of telling the difference between commas and periods, I suppose.
It isn't factually dishonest, because it is an accurate number, and anyone can make sense of it. I say it is intellectually dishonest because it reads to me as a clear attempt to make the number appear more impressive. Borrowing from Wikipedia, "intellectual honesty": Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions It would still be accurate to say it was a $3,200,000,000.000…
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They have paying customers. It matters.
Helen of Troy which owns Kaz, which owns Honeywell (one of the largest businesses specific to Nest's thermostat space) has a market cap of $1.7bil - http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=HELE - that's why this sounds crazy. On the flip side, P&G is a $217bil business - so, not that crazy how big the market is and can be. EDIT: As larrys points out, Honeywell is a $70bil biz.
Given Google's history with acquisitions, as a Nest owner, I'm not thrilled to hear this. Hopefully they let it run as independently as possible.
On the other hand, Android, Inc. was an acquisition with a similar purpose–to break into a new product space–and it grew into a fully-supported division. I don't think Google will treat this as an acquihire situation.
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They have paying customers. It matters.
Nest has customers who have paid it, it does not have paying customers. There is no ongoing fee despite every device Nest sells being connected to its servers 24/7/365. It takes no more than ~3 seconds for any changes you make on their web/mobile apps to reach the thermostat, so it has to be at least checking in with a server constantly.
The cynic in me shudders at the possibility of Google adding even more real-world data like temperature preference and lifestyle factors to their massive data portfolio. The idealist in me is incredibly excited at the possibility of Nest's fundamental strengths being bolstered by Google's coffers.
Am I the only one who thought "well, good for the Nest guys" followed by "too bad, it looked like a good product"?