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Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

uk.businessinsider.com

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Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#291

Post by jasonlaramburu »

click170 wrote: post #284
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you determine if a given feature 'should' be entirely offline?

Unlocking my front door? That has to work without internet access. Turning my lights on and off? That has to work without internet access. Logging my heart rate et all, ala fitbit? Nope, I should be able to use a server of my choosing, requiring that I use cloud servers for something I paid a one time fee for is an instant deal breaker. A service that logged all of my access times and determined whether or not I was…

Thanks for the info! Have you found many devices that meet this criteria? I can't think of any smart locks that run locally.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#292

Post by driverdan »

maxaf wrote: post #72

As a longtime Dropcam owner, I find this very unsettling. Truth be told, Dropcam service has steadily decreased in quality ever since the Nest acquisition. Not a month passes without an unexplained multi-hour outage; our mobile apps are randomly logged out every few days, requiring us to enter lengthy passwords while nervously wondering what that motion alert might be about. One day the whole Nest rigmarole will beco…

To put it bluntly, this is what you get for buying a device that relies on a remote service. You have to expect it won't work forever.

Once you give up control to someone else you have no say.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#293

Post by erikpukinskis »

nostrademons wrote: post #279
rconti wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.

Larry tends to be very loyal to his lieutenants. I'd say this is a combination of 1.) his personality type 2.) that you have to be, in order to get people to work for you when it's clear that you aren't going to step aside any time soon and 3.) his long-term orientation, where he's willing to endure a lot of temporary hiccups with the faith that people will eventually get the job done. All of these are positive chara…

What do you mean about his personality type?

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#294

Post by nostrademons »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #293
nostrademons wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry tends to be very loyal to his lieutenants. I'd say this is a combination of 1.) his personality type 2.) that you have to be, in order to get people to work for you when it's clear that you aren't going to step aside any time soon and 3.) his long-term orientation, where he's willing to endure a lot of temporary hiccups with the faith that people will eventually get the job done. All of these are positive chara…

What do you mean about his personality type?

I'm a fan of Meyers-Briggs, so through that lens, I'd peg Larry as an INTJ, and INTJs tend to be very loyal to people close to them at the expense of not getting close to very many people. Tertiary Fi and all that.

Through the non-MBTI lens, just that he tends to be long-term oriented, inwardly-focused, and prefers to invest in long-term relationships with a few trusted people rather than gregariously flirt with many. He wanted all of his executives to pledge to commit to Google for 10 years when he became CEO in 2011 (ironically, most of them have left by now).

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#295

Post by kefka »

makomk wrote: post #209
ksenzee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they offload all processing to these machines to retain control of them. That makes it sound like their primary concern is keeping control of the devices. In reality I think it's just laziness. We all know how much easier it is to support code running on a server than to support code running on hardware sitting on somebody's dusty garage shelf with no internet connection.

It's definitely one of their primary concerns. If they use open standards, then other manufacturers (most likely Chinese ones with access to the latest highly-integrated bargain basement chips) can come in and undercut their pricing. Tech companies - especially VC-funded ones - are very aware of the importance of a moat around their product to stop this from happening. If they can get ongoing monthly revenue out of i…

That's why I'm waiting for the Chinese shops to start making standards-compliant gear. I will gladly buy it and recommend others to buy.

I'm sick and tired of the US 'business playground' antics. A certain VC funding group is also well known for bad antics, although they got their client company slapped down by a rogue hacker for lockdown antics :) Imagine that.

http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#296

Post by ygmelnikova »

mrexroad wrote: post #61
SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I bought a Dropcam when they were a new thing. When I realized they did literally everything via a cloud service and would be a brick without that service, I was furious. The incredible arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion, was astonishing to me. I still can't believe something like Dropcam is such a huge succe…

counter point: i pre-ordered dropcam for the reason that it was limited to cloud-use only. I wanted something dead simple to use so my wife / house sitter / etc could easily move it as needed, we had access anywhere without configuration, and devops/it being handled by someone else incase i'm not around. Classifying their cloud-only product design decision as "incredible arrogance" quite a stretch... if anything, sou…

I cancelled the plan as well, but ended up getting charged at renewal time. The effort required on my part to fix that mistake was unacceptable (submitting screen shots of my Nest account details, required to send photo of the serial number on the camera, weeks of communication delays), and they STILL owe me some money, and have ignored further requests.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#297

Post by eli »

jimrandomh wrote: post #41

This is neither the first time Google's done something like this to customers, nor the first time Tony Fadell has been directly involved. When they pulled Google Glass from the market, it was concurrent with moving the Glass team to Fadell's leadership. They didn't go quite so far as to push an update to brick devices, but they left the software in a broken state, and refused to open source their fork of Android so u…

Do you have some beef with him? I'm not a big fan of this sort of personal attack of someone's character on HN.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#298

Post by kalleboo »

x0x0 wrote: post #97
maxaf wrote: post #72

As a longtime Dropcam owner, I find this very unsettling. Truth be told, Dropcam service has steadily decreased in quality ever since the Nest acquisition. Not a month passes without an unexplained multi-hour outage; our mobile apps are randomly logged out every few days, requiring us to enter lengthy passwords while nervously wondering what that motion alert might be about. One day the whole Nest rigmarole will beco…

How long, as a practical manner, is google required to run these servers? Until all the devices die? 3 years? 5 years? Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I think 4 years from sale is reasonable though. Whatever the commitment is, it should be on the packaging, and it would be nice if the various state and federal consumer protection laws were applied here.

EU consumer protection laws give you an implied 3 year warranty, so I that's a good start a suppose.

To align business interests, I'd probably like to see something like "3 years free service included, after that a subscription is required" so that customers are an asset rather than a liability.

In addition, everything should have some kind of use without a cloud mode, even if it's not fully featured. E.g. Dropcam should revert to a basic USB webcam in lieu of a cloud service, if only to reduce the amount of electrical waste we're producing. Ideally firmware signing keys should be released when a product is EOL'd, so the open source community can pick up the torch.

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#299

Post by bsder »

srathi wrote: post #124
eykanal wrote: post #95

This has been going on for, oh, a few hundred years, in many different industries. They even have a word for it: "renting". You get something for a while, and then when the term is up, you're done with it. You can extend the lease and they can agree to let you do so, but when you're done you're done. The only issue here seems to be that the COMPANY views the transaction as a rental while the CONSUMER views the transa…

Interestingly, all the robots are leased, not purchased, from US Robotics and Mechanical Man, in the fictional universe of Isaac Asimov.

Not all. There was one very prominent robot that was responsible for that rule.

See the story: The Bicentennial Man

Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

#300

Post by anonexnester »

antiviral wrote: post #260
rconti wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know almost nothing about the inner workings of Google or the Nest team, and yet I regularly hear about Tony and what a piece of work he is. If someone like myself, only casually acquainted with the organization, hears so many bad things about Tony, how does he still have a job? Forget his apparent management incompetence, at this point it's just bad PR for Google.

>how does he still have a job Certain people are gifted with the ability to "kiss up and kick down" their team, i.e., kiss up to those they need to impress, and for anyone else that is less valuable, "kick them" or treat them with less regard. Here is a good Wikipedia article, with several case studies: John Bolton, Robert McNamara. Maybe someone can add his name to this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_up_ki…

This. Spot on. Not just for Tony, but for everyone who is admired at Nest. First-line managers (not all, only the ones that the company celebrates and adores) especially - making life difficult for poor individual contributors (micromanagement, zero positive feedback or encouragement, tons of critical feedback), all the while sucking up to the middle managers who think their lieutenants are the best thing since sliced bread.
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