
On Google's Acquisition of Nest - coloneltcb
http://daringfireball.net/2014/01/googles_acquisition_of_nest
======
Steko
This touches back to Gruber's assertion that Google is getting better at what
Apple does best (device design) faster than Apple is getting better at what
Google does best (web services).

~~~
gfodor
...and soon robotics.

I'm a huge Apple fanboy but they _really_ need to get their shit together on
the web services front. Siri still sucks almost unbelievably bad. It never
works. Maps still leads me to random streets and goes in circles.

As we move towards smaller and smaller devices one has to assume more of the
work is going to be happening in the data center. Not good news for Apple
unless they start making some real strategic acquisitions stat. (They've
started at least.)

~~~
IBM
Do you actually use Siri or Maps? Because I find your complaints about them
absurd, I use both of these services every day and they work marvelously.

~~~
x0x0
Do you? apple maps just led us 18 minutes out of the way _just this weekend_.
It's apparently incapable of leading people to restaurants just off 80 in
Auburn, CA. When we gave up and used decent software -- ie google maps -- it
got us straight there.

~~~
freehunter
And other times, Google Maps leads me astray or takes me down inappropriate
roads while Bing Maps/Nokia Maps works just fine. It's almost like they're all
getting their mapping data independently and as such have their own unique
strengths and weaknesses.

------
codex
I have a hard time believing Nest sold due to scaling issues. I find an easier
time believing that they did not have the money to achieve their (expensive)
vision, and selling to Google was easier than raising a massive round. It's
the classic "our product is good but doesn't make any money; solution: double
down." Nest has a huge staff for what it currently sells.

~~~
grinich

        Nest has a huge staff for what it currently sells.
    

I thought something similar. And then I worked there for a summer. Building
hardware is much more difficult than you think, in ways that aren't
immediately obvious.

Someone like Tony can easily raise capital in Silicon Valley, and Nest's
products were selling extremely well across many retail locations. I'd be
astonished if they were running out of money.

Why is it surprising that scaling is the issue? Tony's entire background is in
devices and hardware, not large software systems.

They have a huge complex stack. Imagine building a system with tens (or
hundreds) of thousands of connected nodes, all streaming realtime data that
must be analyzed, and which _can 't_ ever go down. A Django app just won't cut
it. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Nest. The machine learning is
surprisingly sophisticated.

~~~
hueving
>which can't ever go down.

The thermostats don't cease to function if they can't contact nest's website.
I agree that it's important, but it's no more critical than any other day-to-
day website.

~~~
AVTizzle
They do have smoke detectors too though. 100% uptime is critical.

~~~
tlrobinson
Presumably they'll still function like a normal smoke detector if Nest's
servers go down.

Right? RIGHT?!

~~~
smackfu
Of course. Interesting also is that the Nest Protects form a mesh network to
set off the alarm across all of them, even if the wifi is down.

~~~
throwaway092834
I believe that's a recent requirement in California for new or updated
dwellings. See R314.5:
[http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/firelifesafety/pdf/Smoke%20Alarm%20T...](http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/firelifesafety/pdf/Smoke%20Alarm%20Task%20Force/R-32%202010%20CA%20Residential%20Code.pdf)

Also interesting is that quite a few municipalities forbid connecting the fire
alarm system to any external system, unless the external system is UL listed.
Could be some regulatory hurdles in Nest's future.

------
neals
Great way to get to know people's living habits, when people are home and at
work. Add a little speaker and advertise right into the living room.

Then cancel the device after 2 years because it doesn't fit into Google vision
anymore.

~~~
smackfu
Our smartphones are already tracking our home and work addresses. And have
much higher penetration.

~~~
chalst
Quite. And mobile phones were tracking locations in a police-surveillance
friendly manner before there were smartphones.

~~~
neals
Absolutely! And private detectives would follow people around before that.

------
laureny
Wow, it's almost as if Gruber is running out of negative things to say about
Google.

~~~
wmeredith
Gruber calls both Google and Apple on their bullshit all the time. He just
knows more about Apple.

~~~
laureny
That's not true, most of the stuff he posts about Google is negative and
positive about Apple. This article is the first exception I see in years (and
it's not even positive about Google, it's just neutral, which is already quite
a departure from his usual prose).

------
RRWagner
Now all I see when I look at my Nest is a Google eye, that knows (because I
told it!) when I'm "away". :(

(for more creepy fun, do a Google image search for "HAL 9000")

------
hackaflocka
I've been detecting a subtext of exasperation in some of Gruber's posts about
Google vs Apple. Gruber, of course, is not an Apple fan-boy, per se. He's a
tech fan-boy. He has displayed plenty of love for Amazon, and though he is
very shy of Google's sleazy tactics, he clearly admires certain aspects of
Google's enterprise.

But it's almost as if he's beginning to wonder about Apple's cojones.

------
kordless
They just bought a ton of robot companies. Now they are buying a company who
can do consumer products - home automation stuff, in fact. They have Ray and
that 512 qbit quantum computer. I can see what they are doing, I think. They
are creating Google Robot. They were always going to do this. Google-Bot.
Android. The challenges to go to the moon.

Oh, and iGoogle.

~~~
mzl
The "quantum computer" is a good marketing gimmick, but the problem it solves
is fairly uninteresting. See
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400)
for some critical discussion of the D-Wave machine.

~~~
brotchie
The Ising model Hamiltonian that the D-Wave computer "evolves" almost directly
maps to the energy equation you have to minimize to train a restricted
Boltzmann machine.

I wouldn't call this "uninteresting" given the rapid advances in leveraging
Boltzmann machines for deep learning.

~~~
mzl
Ok, I agree that it can be interesting for some cases, but it is not at all
what people expect when they hear "quantum computer".

In addition, the comparisons with traditional methods for solving that problem
show that you may as well solve the problem on normal hardware. Then the
problem it solves stated as "Ising model Hamiltonian using quantum computer"
is fairly uninteresting given that it is cheaper and simpler to solve the
"Ising model Hamiltonian using classical hardware".

------
mcintyre1994
More than getting Google into consumer products, it'd be great if this pushed
them to launch the platform of the internet of things. Just like Android
unified the market like nobody else would, nobody else is going to give small
consumer device makers a way into that internet of things and it'll end up
horribly fragmented without something like Google providing a platform.
Without that platform I can't see how it could go mainstream.

------
qdog
I'm getting old. Wasn't even aware of Nest. However, 5% of Google seems like a
large amount of money to acquire a startup. What did I miss?

~~~
cmelbye
Beautiful understated home automation designed better than any other company
has designed similar products in the past. You should really take a look, I'm
surprised that it's possible to not have heard of them before.

~~~
hnriot
for 99.99% of the population a simple thermostat works just fine. And nearly
all of them don't even understand that the temperature setting doesn't
actually change the temperature of the air, but rather the duration it remains
on. NEST is pretty, but way over engineered for the task. Consumers just don't
need it. I'm all for technology and am an early adopter and of course have
heard of NEST, seen them etc. Like you say, it's hard to imagine some one here
not having done so, but my guess is the commenter has seen them, but just
didn't take it in because "home automation" has a long legacy of being utter
crap. When you get past the pretty design, there's nothing really to the
thing. It's just a massively over engineered pretty consumer device that very
few people need. I'm pretty sure Apple didn't buy them because they could just
as simply designed their own. I fail to see why the thermostat can't (if Apple
were to design it) not have a UI at all but rather just be a little plugin
thing, maybe "Thermoport Express" and you use your iPhone to make changes from
anywhere, don't even need to get up and look at the device. Any hardware
solution quickly looks old. The iPhone (to Apple) is the UI for everything.

~~~
kashkhan
> the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air,

I am sorry... yes having a higher temp setting means the heat will on for
longer (or ac for less) but it DOES change the temperature of the air. The
thermostat measures the temperature and turns the mahcine on and off
accordingly.

~~~
marcosdumay
It doen not immediatly change the temperature. It acts by proxy.

If you never met one of those people that say "hey, it's too hot here, let me
lower the thermostat" just after they turn the AC on, you are a very lucky
guy.

~~~
kashkhan
just like the steering wheel does not turn the car, and the rocket engine
doesn't put the rocket into space.

The controller controls the input. The state changes, because the control
input is changed.

The thermostat is not a timer.

------
f_salmon
After all we now know about data being collected about us, against our will,
and sooner or later used against our interests, is it smart to have Google
also have data about your home?

~~~
lazyjones
This development can't be stopped. Since one company is reckless enough to
push and benefit from it, others will follow and it will become the norm. It's
not the first time that potentially malicious technology gets sold on apparent
advantages for consumers. If that doesn't work, they can still bribe
government entities / the EU commission (see smart meters).

------
WalterBright
Wouldn't it have been far cheaper to just build their own Nest (and license
any patents)?

~~~
Istof
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy Facebook instead of trying to build your
own

------
henriquea
At the end of the day it's all about money.

------
brooksbp
> “People who are really serious about software should make their own
> hardware.” That’s never been true of Google

What about the pluto switch or the custom servers? Sure, they don't make chips
or maybe don't even do PCB layout and all of that stuff, but I'm sure they
have great hardware designers and embedded software people, no? I didn't even
mention the google glass, mobile devices, and self-driving cars.

EDIT: Got it. Thanks. Was too eager to respond..

~~~
nickheer
He mentions that in the second-from-last paragraph:

> The software that Google was most serious about — web search, Gmail, and so
> forth — ran in the cloud, and with the company’s legendary data centers,
> they effectively built their own hardware.

