Google Kills Nest Secure, Can't Be Bothered To Explain Support Roadmap

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

Three years ago, Google jumped into the home security market. After a troubled development cycle it launched Nest Secure, a $500 home security system that competes with the likes of Abode and Simplisafe. But things didn't go quite as planned. Last year, the company took some deserved heat for failing to mention the system's "Nest Guard" keypad control base included a hidden microphone, creating ample paranoia among owners. Google also took heat for failing to really deploy updates at the same pace that other Nest products had seen, and for making changes that locked you into the Google ecosystem at the cost of interoperability.

Last week the company quietly told Android Police it would be killing the Nest Secure completely. The company didn't really explain why, or what happens next, only to state that the product will still work. For now. Of course when Ars Technica pressed the company as to how long existing users can expect their expensive security service to get support, the company apparently couldn't be bothered to answer:

"We tried asking Google about all this a few days ago when we got a tip that the Nest Secure was listed as "no longer available" (thanks, Bill!) but the company wouldn't answer. Included in our email were questions about what the future looks like for existing Nest Secure users, like if they'll ever be able to buy more sensors or replacement sensors for their existing setups (these have been out of stock for a while now) or how much longer the Nest Secure will be supported for. Even if Google doesn't immediately turn off the software support, a system with no replacement parts can only die a slow death."

So not just murky answers, but no answers at all.

Hyping products and entire ecosystems, then destroying them with a casual wave without transparent communications isn't a great way to develop consumer trust. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's part and parcel for a hardware industry that routinely bricks or stops supporting hardware and ecosystems you just got done shelling out hundreds to thousands of dollars for. That's especially true in home automation and security, where users have to shell out an arm and a leg for various household sensors that in many instances won't work with any other systems due to companies that view interoperability as a threat to walled gardens.

In this case, users have invested upwards of thousands of dollars for a home security ecosystem with an uncertain support future. And despite the fact that Google may be cooking up a new system with its partners at ADT, when it inevitably comes time to replace these expensive systems, or invest hundreds to thousands of dollars in a new ecosystem (be it Stadia game streaming or anything else), the message being sent is that you can't trust Google to stick around and truly support the ecosystems their marketing department just got done claiming you couldn't live without.

Filed Under: google graveyard, nest, nest secure, roadmap, support
Companies: google, nest

Nest May Be The First Major Casualty Of Hollow 'Internet Of Things' Hype

from the hero-to-zero dept

When the Nest smart thermostat was launched back in 2011, you may recall that it was met with an absolute torrent of gushing media adoration, most of it heralding the real arrival of the smart home. That was in part thanks to the fact the company was founded by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, both ex-Apple engineers with some expertise in getting the media to fawn robotically over shiny kit. But a parade of high-profile PR failures have plagued the effort since, including several instances where botched firmware updates briefly bricked the device, leaving even the media's resident internet of things evangelists annoyed.

Under the hood it has become increasingly clear that the company was plagued by what some cooperating companies recently proclaimed was an overall "culture of arrogance", manifested in a reputation for blaming Nest's own problems on partner companies. And being acquired by Alphabet (Google) didn't seem to help matters. Despite expanding the company's employee count from 280 to 1200 and being provided a "virtually unlimited" budget, the same press that built Nest into an internet of things god based on a single pretty thermostat design has suddenly and comically realized that Nest hasn't actually done or produced much of anything:

"In return for all this investment, Nest delivered very little. The Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect smoke detector both existed before the Google acquisition, and both received minor upgrades under Google's (and later Alphabet's) wing. A year after buying Dropcam, Nest released the Nest Cam, which was basically a rebranded Dropcam. Two-and-a-half years under Google/Alphabet, a quadrupling of the employee headcount, and half-a-billion dollars in acquisitions yielded minor yearly updates and a rebranded device. That's all."

There's also the recent kerfuffle involving Nest acquiring smart home hub manufacturer Revolv in 2014, then effectively bricking a $300 device as of last month (again, without really providing anything to replace it with). Over the last year Nest also started leaking many top employees and there was a notably ugly and public feud with Dropcam co-founder and departing Nest employee Greg Duffy, who blamed Nest's dysfunction on Fadell's "tyrant bureaucrat" management style.

Now after six years leading Nest's frontal assault to nowhere, co-founder Tony Fadell announced last Friday in a blog post that he will be stepping down as CEO. The departing executive tries valiantly to claim it was just time to "leave the nest" (ba dum bum):

"Today though, my news is bittersweet: I have decided that the time is right to “leave the Nest.” While there is never a perfect time to transition, we’ve grown Nest to much more than a thermostat company. We’ve created a hardware + software + services ecosystem, which is still in the early growth stage and will continue to evolve to move further into the mainstream over the coming years.

Alphabet CEO Larry Page meanwhile issued a rosy statement of his own about this firing dressed up as a not firing:

"Under Tony’s leadership, Nest has catapulted the connected home into the mainstream, secured leadership positions for each of its products, and grown its revenue in excess of 50% year over year since they began shipping products. He’s a true visionary, and I look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role as advisor to Alphabet. I’m delighted that Marwan will be the new Nest CEO and am confident in his ability to deepen Nest’s partnerships, expand within enterprise channels, and bring Nest products to even more homes."

And while that's sweet and all, Fadell reportedly held an all hands Google meeting back in April after which he was pretty furiously mocked by Google employees, many of which wanted (and presumably still want) Fadell fired and Nest sold off. Google/Alphabet, meanwhile, appears to have gone full speed ahead on a variety of smart home projects that have nothing to do with Nest, including the company's Asus and TP-Link OnHub routers (which have baked in IOT functionality not fully enabled yet), and the more recently unveiled Google Home (Google's version of Amazon Echo).

Nest can certainly still turn things around whether it's sold or remains at Alphabet, and it should soon be clear just how big of a role Fadell's management style played in the company's gear grinding. But the media's manufacture and subsequent demolition of Nest is also part of a broader cautionary tale about the tech media's boundless adoration of style over substance (or, security, as "smart" tea kettles, refrigerators, TVs, and vehicles keep illustrating) when it comes to the internet of shiny things.

Filed Under: hype, internet of things, smart things, thermostat, tony fadell
Companies: alphabet, dropcam, google, nest

You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware

from the permanent-software-downgrade dept

Google (Alphabet) isn't making any friends on the news that Alphabet's Nest is effectively bricking working smart home hardware for a large number of users. About seventeen months ago the company acquired Revolv, rolling the smart-home vendor's products in with its also-acquired Nest product line. Revolv hardware effectively lets users control any number of smart-home technologies around the home, ranging from home thermostats and garage door openers, to outdoor lights and security and motion detection systems. But according to an updated Revolv FAQ, all of these systems will no longer work as of May 15, 2016.

In other words, the FAQ notes, users who thought they bought smart home hardware will soon own very pricey bricks:Needless to say, there's a growing number of people annoyed with the fact that a $300 smart home hub will soon be totally useless:

"On May 15th, my house will stop working. My landscape lighting will stop turning on and off, my security lights will stop reacting to motion, and my home made vacation burglar deterrent will stop working. This is a conscious intentional decision by Google/Nest. To be clear, they are not simply ceasing to support the product, rather they are advising customers that on May 15th a container of hummus will actually be infinitely more useful than the Revolv hub."

What's more users claim this wasn't really communicated, but was only something a user realizes if they happen to wander over to the Revolv website:

"That’s a pretty blatant “fuck you” to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware. They didn’t post this notice until long after Google had made the acquisition, so these are Google’s words under Tony Fadell’s direction. It is also worth pointing out that even though they have my email address, the only way a customer discovers this home IoT mutiny is to visit the Revolv web site."

Obviously this isn't new, it's the new normal. Consumers are pretty constantly buying hardware they think they own, either to have that hardware made less useful (as we've seen with some game consoles), or in this instance stop working entirely thanks to later software updates. There's any number of things Google could have done to avoid customer ill will, from a slight discount off of Nest or other products, or even, hey, an e-mail reminding users that the smart home hubs they paid $300 for would soon be little more than a lovely paperweight.

Google obviously wants these users to spend money on new Nest hardware, but lately that doesn't seem like such a solid bet. Initially the darling of unskeptical media reviewers (thanks to the company using some very Apple-esque marketing tactics), Nest has been plagued in more recent months by a series of software updates that have caused the IOT devices to occasionally stop working (as in, a thermostat that won't heat your house). Company leadership has also recently been criticized as tyrannically bureaucratic, and the company has taken heat as an under performer while losing executives at a notable rate.

So sure, go ahead and buy all new pricey Nest hardware for your smart home. Surely it will still actually work in a year, right?

Filed Under: iot, smart home
Companies: google, nest, revolv

Nest Thermostat Goes From 'Internet Of Things' Darling To Cautionary Tale

from the benefit-of-dumb-devices dept

Back when the Nest thermostat was announced in 2011, it was met with waves of gushing adoration from an utterly uncritical technology press. Much of that gushing was certainly warranted; Nest was founded by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, both former Apple engineers, who indisputably designed an absolutely gorgeous device after decades of treating the thermostat as an afterthought. But the company also leaned heavily on the same media acupressure techniques Apple historically relies on to generate a sound wall of hype potentially untethered from real life.

Courtesy of marketing and design, Nest slowly but surely became the poster child for the connected home. Over the last year or so however things have changed, and while now Alphabet-owned Nest remains an internet of things darling, the unintended timbre of the message being sent is decidedly different. For example, Nick Bilton recently wrote a piece in the New York Times noting how a glitch in the second generation of the supposedly "smart" product drained the device battery, resulting in numerous customers being unable to heat their homes just as a cold snap hit the country:

"The Nest Learning Thermostat is dead to me, literally. Last week, my once-beloved “smart” thermostat suffered from a mysterious software bug that drained its battery and sent our home into a chill in the middle of the night. Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off."

Again, that's the poster child of the so-called "smart" device revolution failing utterly to complete a task thermostats have been successfully accomplishing for a generation. Other tech reporters like Stacey Higginbotham reported the exact opposite. As in, her Nest device began trying to cook her family in the middle of the night, something Nest first tried to blame on her smart garage door opener, then tried to blame on her Jawbone fitness tracker (Nest never did seem to pinpoint the cause). Her report suggests that an overall culture of "arrogance" at Nest shockingly isn't helping pinpoint and resolve bugs:

"One Nest partner, who declined to be named to preserve his business relationship with the company, said that Nest being quick with the blame didn’t surprise him, citing a culture of arrogance at the company. When something went wrong during integration testing between his device and Nest’s, problems were first blamed on his servers and team."

And fast-forward to last week, when researchers putting various internet of thing devices through tests found that the Nest thermostat was one of many IOT devices happily leaking subscriber location data in cleartext (with Nest, it's only the zip code, something the company quickly fixed in a patch). Granted Nest's not alone in being an inadvertent advertisement for a product's "dumb" alternatives. In 2016, smart tea kettles, refrigerators, televisions and automobiles are all busy leaking your private information and exposing you to malicious intrusion (or worse).

It's a fascinating, in-progress lesson about how our lust for the sexy ideal of the connected home appears to be taking a brief pit stop in reality, where sexy doesn't matter if the underlying product, person or device remains inherently dysfunctional. As a result, dumb and ugly technology is poised to make a dramatic comeback.

Filed Under: internet of things, iot, nest, reliability, security
Companies: alphabet, nest

Nest Gets Sued Again For Patent Infringement For Daring To Make A Better Product

from the you-need-a-patent-to-add-a-voice-to-a-smoke-detector? dept

A year and a half ago, we wrote about the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Honeywell against Nest. Honeywell, of course has a huge market share for thermostats, while Nest is the innovative upstart -- the darling of the tech set for rethinking how to make a simple thermostat and include Apple-style design touches and features. It was a perfect example of a complacent legacy player caught off-guard by a disruptive upstart... which then chooses to sue instead of just compete in the marketplace. Recently, Nest launched its second product to much fanfare: doing a similar rethinking of the lowly smoke detector -- adding a bunch of features that make it more useful, safer and less annoying than today's common smoke detectors. Hurray for innovation.

And so, of course, Nest has now been sued for patent infringement again, this time by BRK, makers of "First Alert," which holds a patent on certain features, like having a smoke detector that uses a voice instead of a loud beeping. Wait, you may be saying to yourself: you can patent using a voice in a smoke detector, instead of a beep? According to BRK, apparently you can get six such patents: 6,144,310, 6,600,424, 6,323,780, 6,784,798, 7,158,040 and 6,377,182. Okay, okay, I exaggerate. Only five of those six patents are about voice alarms. One is about how the damn thing is mounted.

Part of the lawsuit seems to suggest that the folks at BRK are just kinda pissed off at Nest's marketing -- in which they've said that "there has been no innovation in the market for years." That was clearly an exaggeration for marketing effect. What BRK is really angry about is that Nest's marketing is working. But that's how competition works. Yes, perhaps BRK put voices into smoke detectors first -- and that's great. But being first is meaningless. What matters is if you can get people to use the devices, and Nest is doing a good job getting the word out. If BRK were smart, it would recognize that Nest is helping to educate the market, and that should increase the opportunity to get their own products more well known. Compete in the marketplace, don't try to shut down the upstart because you're jealous that they're the hot new thing.

Furthermore: I've got two of the BRK First Alert smoke detectors/carbon monoxide detectors in my house already. They're definitely a step up from the traditional kind of smoke detectors (of which I've got another half a dozen around the house as well). But, frankly, the Nest Protect goes way beyond what the First Alert does and puts it in a much more compelling package. It's got lots of innovations that go way beyond just adding a voice, providing more detailed information, and is a product more likely to keep you safe.

In Nest's response, it points out that merely adding voice to a smoke detector was an obvious concept and shouldn't be patentable -- also pointing out that there's significant prior art. There's also the (big) problem that BRK doesn't own most of the patents in the lawsuit. Instead, they're owned by Gary Morris, the inventor, who licensed (but did not assign) them to BRK. BRK argues that it has the exclusive license to those patents, which could potentially mean it has the right to sue, but Nest points out that Morris shows those patents available for license on his website, suggesting otherwise (though, I just looked and it appears those particular patents are no longer listed on his website...).

Either way, BRK may be jealous, but it should channel that effort into building a better product and convincing people to buy it. Don't stomp on the competition just because the new guy is getting some attention: innovate and compete. The world will be a better place and more people will be protected from home fires and carbon monoxide poisoning. Isn't that better than trying to shut down a product that might help keep people safe?

Filed Under: competition, fire alarms, first alert, innovation, patents, smoke detectors
Companies: brk, nest