Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to Acquire Nest

investor.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 590 posts

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#321

Post by arikrak »

27182818284 wrote: post #298
arikrak wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and like Android and Youtube. Sarcasm aside, Google has actually done pretty well with acquisitions compared to other companies. (Say ones that begin with "M" or "Y"). You can see the list in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...

Sarcasm aside? I think the case could be made that those products have grown in public perception, but also suffered at the same time very definitely because of Google influence. Take the second comment ever by one of the YouTube founders? https://www.youtube.com/user/jawed/ for a quick example

One can object to Google's Plussification of everything, but it's not like the quality of Youtube comments have been harmed. (In fact these XKCD comics may be obsolete now: https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+comments+site%3Axkcd... ) And Youtube overall has done quite well.

Android would have gone nowhere without being acquired, since OEMs and carriers wouldn't talk to such a small company.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#322

Post by robg »

smackfu wrote: post #270
robg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. Walk the aisles at your local home improvement store. Find every product that you interact with that is under $20. You can probably make that amazing for $50-100. And what's that in terms of how much people spend on houses?

It would be a fun list. Humidifiers have always annoyed me.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#323

Post by smackfu »

venomsnake wrote: post #297
smackfu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While the Nest Thermostat doesn't require a Wi-Fi connection, additional features like remote control and automatic software updates are only available when the Nest Thermostat connects to the Internet

Is that a joke? Firmware update on a Thermostat?

Um, have you seen the thermostat in question? It has a user interface on it. Why wouldn't it support software updates?

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#324

Post by smackfu »

wmf wrote: post #114
Fasebook wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Realistically Nest is a luxury product and the rest is just rationalization. But luxury gadgets is a legitimate market.

An interesting question is whether Google will keep it a luxury product.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#326

Post by cbr »

dangrossman wrote: post #252
cbr wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the client pulling, not the server pushing. Pushing would be "when the owner makes a change on the website, notify the appropriate thermostat to change its settings". This would be way more efficient, but too many Nests aren't going to have suitable internet connections.

Perhaps you misread "yet" as "yes". I'm curious if there's a power issue as well. I don't know how fast wifi can turn on/off and reconnect to a network. Nest has to be low-power as its only power source is one of the tiny wires from the HVAC system and that doesn't supply enough to run the device offline, let alone online. It uses that wire to charge an internal battery instead.

I did make exactly that misreading; sorry!

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#328

Post by arikrak »

jader201 wrote: post #139
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'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?

A large number of Google acquisitions involve Google making a product free that before cost money.

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#329

Post by dangrossman »

matt-attack wrote: post #277
nate_meurer wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price makes me choke as well. But I think Nest's real value is as a market distruptor, the evidence being Honeywell's lawsuit and furious attempts to update their own products with comparable features.

You're certainly right that they kicked Honeywell in the rear. After years of making the same damned device, they finally released an actually nice thermostat. In fact, I was recently in the market for a new thermostat which I could control on my drive home, or from bed, or whatever. After researching thoroughly, and I opted for Honeywell's latest touchscreen device (over the Nest v2 which has apparently been having…

You're misinformed.

Nest can hold a set temperature like any other thermostat. It'll do so better than any other thermostat, in fact, by learning the efficiency of your heater and A/C so that it doesn't overshoot your targets, and takes into account whether the thermostat is in direct sunlight part of the day, and airflow in your house.

It can also be told to hold a temperature forever, to hold a threshold forever (cool if it gets above 75, heat if it gets below 60), you can set a detailed schedule manually, you can tell it to hold a temperature until a certain time, or you can tell it to just kick on the fan for the next X minutes without changing the temperature then turn back off.

Turning on/off auto-schedule is one click if you want that feature, like all its other learning features. I've never run into any kind of bug with mine. You can change the temperature it's holding at from your iPhone or desktop from anywhere, along with all its other settings.

http://i.imgur.com/3gRj67L.png

http://i.imgur.com/VNwz1ZF.png

Re: Google to Acquire Nest

#330

Post by VLM »

VLM wrote: post #290
acdha wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could get the same benefit from a device for $30 of electronics. … in theory but there's no evidence that most people actually see those benefits: http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revis... I was going to say that you should start a company to produce that competitive $30 thermostat but then you confirmed that you have no idea what you're talking about: > The price doesn't justify the energ…

"but in much of the country people pay many hundreds of dollars every month during the winter or summer. If a smarter thermostat saves 10% of that" Not mathematically / thermodynamically possible, sorry. I live in a cooler area but not the real cold areas up north. During the recent polar vortex, which momentarily was centered over my house (and I'm not kidding) we got down to -15. (70 - -15) = delta t of 85 degrees.…

I hate to reply to a reply, but if you'd like an example of saving 10% energy in a really cold area where bills are really high, lets take my sister, a 40hr a week worker where it got down to -30 during the recent cold snap. Now 70 - -30 = 100 degree delta T. Now the simple way to save 10% would be to permanently set the thermostat to 60F. But thats a bit chilly.

So she works 40 hrs a week which works out to 25% of the time. So we can just turn the thermostat down 4 times as far for a quarter the time. So... She leaves for work and the thermostat drops to 70-40=30. Which is unfortunately below freezing so all her plumbing pipes burst. But at least she saved 10% on her heating. Also she owns an indoor cat and at 30F she'd turn into a frozen cat-sicle.

So she pays $300 for a thermostat that can't save her 10% on her bill unless she destroys all her plumbing flooding her house and killing her cat. I'm not seeing this as a great selling point.

So, no, cold parts of the country are precisely the locations where you can't achieve great heating savings because its mathematically impossible because its so cold outside. Maybe a 20000 sq foot mcmansion on the coast in florida, it might work there. But not where its cold.

Post reply on HN