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posted by janrinok on Monday February 12 2018, @04:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the learning-the-hard-way dept.

After buying Nest, keeping it as an independent company, and considering selling it off, Alphabet/Google is now rolling Nest back into itself. Nest makes various home automation products including a "smart thermostat", security systems, and video doorbells:

Some early employees of Alphabet's smart-home company Nest, including co-founder Tony Fadell, are frustrated by how the company's history has played out now that it has been rolled back into Google.

Google bought Nest for $3.2 billion in early 2014, less than two years before it blew up its corporate structure to form the holding company Alphabet. Under Alphabet, Nest became an independent company and was heralded as the model business in the "Other Bets" category, which also includes Alphabet's venture capital arms, its smart city project Sidewalk and other experimental businesses.

But looking back, these early former employees say that the split ended up being a setback for both companies. "From the outside it looked like Nest was the perfect poster child for Alphabet but, at the same time, separating it was undoing the thing that was most essential for both companies — figuring out how to make them work together," former Nest CEO Tony Fadell tells CNBC via email.

Nest co-founder Matt Rogers announced that he will be leaving the company:

A day after Alphabet announced plans to roll Nest into its hardware team, co-founder Matt Rogers has announced that he's exiting the company. The story was first noted by CNET and quickly confirmed by Rogers on Twitter.

Could just be social media talk, but Rogers' brief statement on the matter appeared to imply that there were no hard feelings. "Nest has been an amazing journey and the honor of my career to build," he wrote. "I could not be more proud of what we have all accomplished and can't wait to see what's next for Nest."

Also at The Verge.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Monday February 12 2018, @06:03PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday February 12 2018, @06:03PM (#636754) Journal

    $50 buys a programmable thermostat that does everything the Nest thermostat does except spy on you. (And nest can't handle multi-zoned houses).
    So Nest never did have a realistic product to sell until they bought Dropcam.

    When they bought dropcam, they promised to run it as a separate business so Google couldn't get ahold of your camera feed inside of your house. Nobody believed that for a second.

    This makes it official. So MORE warrant bait now collected by Google. (Google itself has been true to their word (as far as anyone can tell) about not selling anything except anonamized aggregate data, but they've stopped even protesting when warrants show up for "all information".) Its no longer safe to have a Nest camera in your home. (Disclosure: I like my Nest Outdoors cam for watching my property).

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:14AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @10:14AM (#637059) Journal
    The current EU WhatsApp / Facebook lawsuit is going to be interesting in the precedent that it sets for this kind of thing. WhatsApp T&Cs said that they wouldn't spy on you and would never sell your data to anyone. When Facebook bought them, the EU regulator highlighted this and required that Facebook keep WhatsApp data separate. Then Facebook turned around and said that it was too hard for them to do this and not link Facebook and WhatsApp accounts. If Facebook wins, then it will mean that you won't be able to trust any company's privacy policy, because they can always be sold to another company that can violate it with impunity.
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