Google to Acquire Nest • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#461

Post by danudey » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

psbp wrote: post #267

pwnna wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the statement, lately Google's action has been concerning (with things like Reader, Google+ push, and what not). I just don't want to see Google dominating the world. Competition is nice.

Are you implying that google did a disservice to the competition by creating a desire for a product and then retiring it with months of warning for competitors to develop their product and attract google's large user base while allowing users to easily migrate their information to those services?

Google did a disservice by creating a free service with which other companies (who need to make a profit) couldn't compete. The only way to make any money in the RSS space was to create something that interfaced with Google Reader (which I know because I spent a lot of time trying to find a good one that didn't).

There are parallels to the Internet Explorer/Netscape issue. Google provided a free service to everyone, killing any good paid services/products (which didn't integrate with Google Reader), except instead of taking advantage of their monopoly they just threw it away.

Now you have companies like Reeder, with a sufficiently large user base, who have to not only scramble to provide their own backend (or integrate with someone else's), but also scale it to the appropriate number of users literally overnight, which is not necessarily an easy task for a company which has, so far, only needed to have client-side developers (which is why most client apps, like Reeder, moved to using some other company for their backend instead of writing their own).

There was certainly no malicious intent, but they basically crushed an entire market and then abandoned it.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#462

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:05 AM UTC

njharman wrote: post #364

91bananas wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead in the sense that there has not been feature addition one for several years, yes.

That is probably best acquisition outcome. Most companies buy something good then change it until it sucks.

Except for one feature that users have been screaming for, since near day one: MMS support.

And not in a hacked "if you're with TMo/Sprint, you -might- be able to get an email with the MMS in a format that's not reply-able" (and even that, only recently).

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#463

Post by danudey » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:05 AM UTC

stevewillows wrote: post #377

3327 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the most overlooked aspect of this acquisition. My brother works in HVAC, and I've seen some of the automation available - - the trouble is that the systems aren't intuitive to the user and do very little to think on their own outside of if statements from the sensors.

I would have much rather seen this as a technology/algorithm hire from a company like Honeywell or some other established HVAC company, which could have kept selling the Nest (and their new smoke detector, etc.) but also incorporated the technology into higher-tech commercial/industrial systems, where you some companies could probably save millions a year through more intelligent control and management systems.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#464

Post by Steko » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:06 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #447

angryasian wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while its hard to argue with your point. YT is a huge revenue generating product. Now more than ever Google is probably being pressured by the "content owners" and trying to balance the need for creators to market their channels and helping them grow through questionable content. I think with a mature, product like YT its understandable.

I understand the ads, and they blocking videos just because somebody passed aroung listenning to a music. I don't care about comments at all, thus I don't even know how they changed... But what I'm unable to accept is why the client won't let me buffer a video and erases everything just as soon as it's diplayed on the screen. It does not make downloading the content any harder - all it does is making me download the…

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57600794-285/return-to-y...

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#465

Post by robotresearcher » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:06 AM UTC

Encosia wrote: post #403

njharman wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is probably best acquisition outcome. Most companies buy something good then change it until it sucks.

The best acquisition outcome is something like Android or Kinect, definitely not watching GrandCentral stagnate for years after acquisition.

Kinect was not an acquisition. MS licensed the device from PrimeSense. Apple bought the company recently.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#466

Post by mrinterweb » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:06 AM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #12

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.

I can see the google advertisements now. Spending too much on your heating/cooling? Save big at Acme heating & cooling.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#467

Post by uptown » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:08 AM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #280

caprad wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pixar is still making (some) good movies under Disney. Pixar movie quality seems to have dropped, while Disney's have gone up after the acquisition. http://i.imgur.com/H2s4hVL.jpg Cars 2 was clearly a release for money (they make more money of Cars merchandise than they do from films), but the other films?

Even with a handful of merely good movies, we still have four outstanding Pixar films post-Disney. Also, I'm really enjoying the increase in quality of Disney movies post-Pixar. Just saw Frozen last week and loved it.

But given the timeline of producing those types of films, I wonder how much of those four was already in-motion prior to the deal closing?

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#468

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:09 AM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #344

bentcorner wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pay a few dollars more, maybe . At the end of the day as long as it isn't garishly awful I don't particularly care. For example, this one does everything I need and costs 10% of a nest: http://amzn.com/B002RL9BIM It actually has a backlight which is a step up from what I have today. It's just not important to me. Definitely not $250 important. I could definitely use a smarter thermostat, but my vision of the futu…

Wow. That is ugly . Imagine you just, like me, bought your dream house. In the den you installed new hardware floors and custom builtin bookshelves, that you built yourself in a few hundred hours, using a gorgeous hardwood and a stain you picked after testing more than a dozen shades. Which thermostat goes on the wall, about 15 inches from the bookselves. That POS or a Nest?

Well, ok, now I disagree :) (because up to now, I was agreeing with everybody.)

It's not that ugly, but more important, it's white and not shiny. If I was looking for a thermostat for a completely decorated house, that's exactly the thing I'd look for (unless the walls were colored, in that case I'd get somebody to paint it). The one thing I wouldn't want people to look at in my house is the thermostat (and that's quite a thing for me to say, because my house has even decorative power outlets).

Somebody with a great sense of aestetics may be able to place a shinny thermostat in a way that it looks nice. That's not for 99% of us, and few people do hire the other 1% for helping them.

But, anyway, I'm here just for the fun, because I'm certainly not looking for a thermostat.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#469

Post by lstamour » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:09 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #448

lstamour wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol ... I can see the ads now: Power outage? Bring 11ºC up to 20ºC. Hotel rooms from $109. Get an energy audit and stop those 3ºC/hr leaks, save $X/year. Broken furnace? Call XXX-XXX-XXXX now. Though ... indoor & outdoor temperature would be a fun addition to Google Now. And imagine if the Google Nest was a mini-server for home automation?

Nest can't really act as a server for anything; it has insufficient power supply, probably under a watt. It can't even run its own tiny LCD screen on the power supplied by HVAC wiring. It uses that to charge an internal battery to run the screen when needed, and otherwise only partially wakes to poll the network occasionally.

Good point, though I'm not sure how often a server needs to operate yet. I suppose I wasn't suggesting that Google should abandon the cloud and put servers in people's homes -- if anything, Nest has a pretty Google-ish architecture. We all know that Android with wifi and BLE is Google's most likely "home server" at this point -- that and whatever Nest comes up with next, including those more powerful smoke detectors.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#470

Post by lstamour » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 1:12 AM UTC

danudey wrote: post #463

stevewillows wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most overlooked aspect of this acquisition. My brother works in HVAC, and I've seen some of the automation available - - the trouble is that the systems aren't intuitive to the user and do very little to think on their own outside of if statements from the sensors.

I would have much rather seen this as a technology/algorithm hire from a company like Honeywell or some other established HVAC company, which could have kept selling the Nest (and their new smoke detector, etc.) but also incorporated the technology into higher-tech commercial/industrial systems, where you some companies could probably save millions a year through more intelligent control and management systems.

I never found my Nest to be all that intelligent beyond "I wonder if he'll notice it's colder now?" "Oh wait, he turned me up, I guess he noticed." It's a game of cat and mouse with that darn auto-away enabled sometimes.