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Google to Acquire Nest

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Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#221

Post by dangrossman »

nknighthb wrote: post #188
dangrossman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely the updates are sent via some form of push. Polling on that scale would be obscene.

Yet that's what I believe it does. Every few seconds, Nest sends an HTTP POST to their servers with its serial number. If there are any commands waiting for that thermostat (change temperature initiated from an app for example), they get sent in response, otherwise the connection is closed.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#222

Post by hoopism »

The Nest UI (web and mobile) is laughable horrible. Only has about 2 weeks historical data. Doesn't record what means a temp was adjusted (web? Phone? Nest?). Doesn't do any sort of trending long term or historical analysis. Charts overlay clicking points so you can see some data. Doing my own analysis it ended up using more energy than my manual changes. So I don't even use autoschedule.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#223

Post by DannyBee »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #34
Karunamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that doesn't get chills up their spine whenever Google breaks into some new market? I see very little possible misuse of temperature preference (of all things...) and very great possible gains. The more intimately a service knows you, the more personalized and relevant data it can bring. And another thing, I am really sick and tired of tempering or being told to temper my enthusiasm for some new tec…

What about the ability to know when someone is in your home and when someone is not? If Google records that data (say, to be able to provide you with a handy chart of your energy use and some ways to improve it), the potential I am more worried about is the fact that the data exists makes it possible to subpoena.

Nest already recorded temperature changes so they could give you a handy chart. So it was already subpoenaable?

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#225

Post by 3327 »

macspoofing wrote: post #128
MrZongle2 wrote: post #11

Am I the only one who thought "well, good for the Nest guys" followed by "too bad, it looked like a good product"?

I thought "Good for the Nest gu...HOLY CRAP GOOGLE PAID $3.2 BILLION FOR A THERMOSTAT COMPANY"

Actually believe it or not but this is a very very expensive acqu-hire. First engineer on the IPhone team? Father of the IPOD? given the size of the smartphone industry and given what apple has become because of the iphone one could argue that the dude is worth half a billion.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#226

Post by smackfu »

pessimizer wrote: post #182

I don't know a lot about Nest, but I understand that requests to the thermostat are made from the phone app indirectly through a central server? 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.

Main advantage is that you can control it from outside the home, which is a selling point of the Nest. That's actually the main point of the app, since the device itself also has a UI that's probably easier to use if you just want to adjust the temperature.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#227

Post by sixothree »

mbrameld wrote: post #140
Karunamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that doesn't get chills up their spine whenever Google breaks into some new market? I see very little possible misuse of temperature preference (of all things...) and very great possible gains. The more intimately a service knows you, the more personalized and relevant data it can bring. And another thing, I am really sick and tired of tempering or being told to temper my enthusiasm for some new tec…

The Nest contains some sensors (not 100% sure what type, a microphone and some type of motion sensor would be my guess though) used to determine whether you're home or not for their auto-away feature, so they get a little more than just your temperature preferences.

If I remember correctly the device senses when you walk near it.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#228

Post by ssmoot »

Fasebook wrote: post #68
MrZongle2 wrote: post #11

Am I the only one who thought "well, good for the Nest guys" followed by "too bad, it looked like a good product"?

Really? $200 for a predictive thermostat, with a lame excuse to stream energy usage data and proximity data (Nest detects humans) out of your home? Id rather pay $99 to tell health insurance companies how often I exercise, live. You could get the same benefit from a device for $30 of electronics. It's an overpriced gimmick to justify another selling off of your personal data forever in exchange for nothing but some m…

I could get the same benefit from a device for $30 of electronics, and however many hours of my free-time I decide to put into such a project.

Which would be a lot more than $250 lost, and not a trade I'd be willing to make considering I value my free time with the family a lot more than that.

For me this whole thing misses the point though. Saving money is a sort of minimum expectation. The thing that Nest delivers that the competitors don't is ease of use. The previous 3M and Honeywell thermostats I owned before were not cheap, but their displays were terrible and their UX was the stuff of nightmares.

It took me probably 10 minutes to setup the Nest by comparison and maintenance has been mostly hands-off. It'll tweak the schedule here and there as necessary.

THAT is the value proposition. To throw out the Indiglo monstrosities before it that were inevitably running on some awful schedule because they were too much trouble and came with 50 page instruction manuals in 5 different languages.

I don't have time for that.

So to me, that's why Nest is successful. It might also explain why their smoke detectors are meh to me. Having a nice UX for something I don't actually need to interface with beyond tapping the occasional "ignore" button just isn't very much of a motivation to spend $100.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#229

Post by potatolicious »

droopybuns wrote: post #212
randomdata wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android, Inc., also acquired by Google, seemed to work out well for the consumer, I would say.

I just don't get why anyone would hold android up as an example of success, given the comments in the following thread. The gap between expectations & execution on android is tremendous. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7053108

The comparison isn't between "what Android could be under Google" and "what Android is under Google".

The comparison is between "what Android could be as an independent company" and "what Android is under Google".

I think ultimately Android is doing a lot better for a lot more people than it would have had it remained independent. I'm also having a hard time imagining anyone else that could've acquired them and achieved substantially better results (see: Microsoft's handling of the Danger acquisition).

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#230

Post by cbr »

nknighthb wrote: post #188
dangrossman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely the updates are sent via some form of push. Polling on that scale would be obscene.

Nope; if you have a device in people's houses you basically have to configure them to pull. NATs and other connectivity tricks mean they can reliably initiate communication with you but not the other way around.
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