"Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash." Can that be right? $3.2 billion? That's a crazy huge sum.
$3000 per thermostat sold.
Google to Acquire Nest
191–200 of 590 posts
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#192[deleted]
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#193The real winners are DST Global and the others who bought round D and got what looks like a 50% return on $150 million in about 2 weeks.
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
HoT/Kaz only produce products for the Honeywell brand. They do not own Honeywell, which is a Fortune 100 company.
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would make it really easy for the DEA to figure out who the home pot growers are. Yeah you can look at utility bills in isolation but that generates a lot of false positives: people might just like to keep their house cold or warm (depending on the climate). But once you correlate house size (via the property appraiser's website, public records) with house temperate (which the NSA gets from Google and supplies to…
...although many high-volume operations that are based inside of residential properties tend to use illegal/'off the grid' (so to speak) electrical connections...
Or you can install a bunch of solar panels and use them to power LEDs without ever connecting them up to the house's on-grid wiring system. That negates the need to permit it all and making that power usage completely invisible.
At least until someone starts correlating satellite photos with solar permits. Then you're back on the radar, and maybe higher up since only people with something to hide have off-grid solar!
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think Google doesn't already know who is in the "frozen North"? How could knowing how long your furnace runs add any value, at all, for you as an advertising target, if we must always go with that utterly simplistic analysis? Further people keep repeatedly claiming that the Nest device has some sort of presence detection. To my knowledge it has no such thing -- it simply allows you to program it by daily overr…
Cut and paste from the nest website: "Activity sensors Nest’s activity sensors have a 150° wide-angle view. That range enables Nest to activate Auto-Away in 90% of homes." Don't know if its just a 0-D light level sensor or a PIR motion detector or a camera. But it does have a 150 degree FoV which vaguely implied optics. It has certain architectural implications, my thermostat is on a lightly traveled inside hallway b…
Conveniently enough, they sell a device to help with that. "In addition, the Nest Protect activity sensors improve the Auto-Away feature of your Nest Thermostat." (Nest Protect is their smoke detector.)
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#197Smart buy in my opinion. The connected home has enormous untapped growth potential, and they just acquired a company that managed to take something as mundane as a thermostat and make it cool.
At least there's a cost savings angle to an intelligent thermostat.
The connected smoke alarm as a cool object really amazed me - it's where new business models are made.
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#198Very surprised Apple didn't purchase this. Headed by Tony Fadell, brilliant design, I thought it would fit and be a nice diversification for them. However it will be very interesting to see what Google does with this. If I put away the cynic in me for a moment: the more data Google has on me the better their services are for me. I could imagine the Nest thermostat integrating with Google Now and the location data Goo…
Google Ventures backed much of the company. So I doubt the VCs would let Apple make a lowball bid for the company (typical of Apple acquisitions). Plus Apple is never known to leave a company running, instead fully integrating it and all of the employees into some already functioning group (think iWatch).
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#199So will I need to sign into my house with a Google+ account now?
Re: Google to Acquire Nest
#200So will I need to sign into my house with a Google+ account now?