Nest, the company, died at Google I / O 2019

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Do not be distracted by the new "Nest" smart screen just announced: Nest passed away to Google I / O 2019. "Google Nest" is the new reality, where Nest is no longer a autonomous company, but is rather a sub-brand (not even a division) of Google. The closing of Nest as an independent business was announced in 2018, but the stack of announcements at I / O 2019 and around is the first time we see what the future will look like. Nest within Google.

Nest has presented its future in a page titled "What's Happening" on Nest.com, as well as a notice on the Works with Nest page. This sounds like a blunt result for users, who are looking at a dead-end ecosystem, potentially broken smart homes, and dismantling the Google / Nest privacy firewall.

Check out the "Google Learning Thermostat"

The first step is Google's recovery of the Nest brand as a sub-brand of general purpose smart home. Just as Google owns the "Pixel" brand for smartphones and laptops, it will now use the "Nest" brand in a similar way, so take the habit of saying and reading "Google Nest", which now means "a product of Google's smart home. "

The new branding has not hit the Google Store yet, but browse the Google help pages and you'll see that each The Nest product has been renamed "Google Nest". We now have the Google Nest Learning Thermostat, the Google Nest Environmental Protection System, the Google Nest Safe Alarm (Google Hello Hello) (this is a bell) ) and the "Google Nest Cam IQ Outdoor". These are all a little annoying and verbose, but they have nothing on the "Nest x Yale Lock with Google Nest Connect", which is the real name of the Nest Door Lock.

The bottom line is that since Nest is no longer a standalone company, Nest is no longer a stand-alone product brand. Officially, it will always be "Google Nest".

Until now, the Google Home speakers have not been renamed, but if Google is really serious about it, we could end up with "Google Nest Speakers" or something similar. Google Wi-Fi is not yet called "Google Nest Wi-Fi". Chromecast's name has not changed its name yet – although as a streaming key with the name of a web browser, it retains the weirdest branding of all Google products.

Nest's smart home platform is dead

The second major novelty of the series is that Google kills the platform "Works with Nest". This is was a smart home platform that would let the Nest Thermostat act as a hub and coordinator for many other products in your smart home. A review on the Works with Nest web page says, "Works with Nest is disappearing." Google's smart home strategy will now only affect the "Works with Google Assistant" program and Nest's ecosystem will be closed in just over three months on August 31, 2019.

I'm sure that users of the Works with Nest ecosystem have purchased products specifically because they were working with Nest. When the service stops in August, it seems like all of these (possibly expensive) third-party smart home products will stop working with all Nest-based automation workflows. This mandatory feature removal situation is just about the worst nightmare of smart home owners.

Nest branded products will continue to work with each other, but since "Works with Nest" was a program that allowed other services to talk to Nest, many third-party integrations will disappear. The Verge has a good idea of ​​the number of services that will break, and that's a brutal who's who smart home products. Amazon Alexa, Philips Hue, IFTTT, Logitech Harmony switches, Lutron Lights, August Home and Wemo will all be affected.

Alexa, it seems, will benefit from special treatment and will continue to work. Alexa has a special page for Alexa: "We are working with Amazon to migrate the Nest skill to Amazon Alexa to ensure a smooth transition for Nest customers before the end of the Works With Nest program in August. " Google and Amazon have struggled to work together in the past, but they seem to have called a truce recently. Other services have not been so lucky and there are already emails from IFTTT, Lutron and others stating the death of their Nest integration.

Work with Nest Users will face a failed smart home, and will have to pick up the remnants of their smart home ecosystem and MacGyver together, another out of the ordinary solution. The good news is that most smart home products are compatible with many smart home ecosystems. It should therefore be rare for something to turn into a complete brick. You will simply have to switch to a new ecosystem, perform a ton of setup and be ready to deal with anything that will not work as before. Theoretically, some of these services might continue to talk to Nest by instead supporting the Google Assistant system.

Working with Nest has always been a strange solution for smart home management. The thermostat was central to your smart home, not because it made sense from the perspective of smart home architecture, but because a thermostat was Nest's most popular product. Works with Nest also did not offer a control interface for this smart device ecosystem. If, for example, you've managed to find a smart lighting system "Works with Nest", Nest did not give you a way to control lights, but only position detection via the app Nest.

Works with Google Assistant is a solution for smart home focused on voice and touch, which makes a lot more sense. The system is built around Google Home speakers and Google Nest smart screens, two excellent control interfaces. You can turn on lights and lock doors with voice or touch controls. you can increase the temperature on a thermostat; and you can run routines that do a lot of those things at once.

Nest accounts and data separation is dead

As part of Nest's goog, Nest accounts are being phased out of Google's smart home strategy. Existing users will not be removed from their Nest Account, but the Nest.com FAQ "strongly recommends" that Nest users migrate to a Google Account. The Nest FAQ warns that "since Nest will offer new and connected home devices and services in the future, many of these will only be available to users with a Google Account." New Nest users will need to use a Google Account.

Migrating to a Google Account involves sending all of your Nest data to Google, which was previously separate. Google indicates that it will use your Nest data in accordance with Google's privacy policy. Nest data includes lots of scary motion sensors, cameras and microphones. Google offers an additional page on "Google Nest Privacy" at home, which describes three main principles:

We will be transparent about the data we collect and why
We will never sell your personal information to anyone
We will allow you to view, move or delete your data

There are even special pages describing principles and data retention for cameras, microphones, home sensors and Wi-Fi data.

Keeping Google's Nest data separate was a major concession made when Google bought the company, designed to combine privacy concerns. Now that goes away, I imagine some Nest users are not happy.

Other Nest things that will probably die in the future

Until now, it seems like the plan is to remove as many things as possible from Nest and get Nest users to use the Google versions of these products and services. Nest's website promises "Over the next few months, you'll see changes in our products, accounts, services and policies as we consolidate all of our activities under Nest." I would not be surprised to learn that all these "changes" involve stopping a product or a Nest service for the benefit of a Google version.

We just had a conflict between "Works with Nest" and "Works with Google Assistant" and the Nest product was shut down. Let's launch our crystal ball and extend this action to a few other crossing points.

The Google Home app in relation to the Nest app

The application situation is dire right now, with both a "Google Home" app and a "Nest" app. The Nest app is for thermostats, cameras, security, smoke detectors and all the old Nest products, while the smart speakers, Chromecast and the Google Nest smart screens use Google Home application.

The Google Nest hardware change is blurring the application situation. People who buy a new Google Nest Hub or Google Nest Hub Max might be tempted to install the Nest app, but that would be false– these products must be configured in the Google Home app. The Nest Hub Max smart screen is equipped with a camera, and although it is a "Nest Camera" that can record videos on the camera's cloud system. Nest security, the video stream is also visible in the Google Home app.

Having two smart home apps for inconsistent products seems like a really clumsy solution, and with the Google Home app that already offers basic compatibility with Nest cameras, I would not be surprised to learn that Nest app will be closed. As a Nest Thermostat user, I'd like the Nest app to die because the Nest app is awful. It is not able to get the basic features like a reliable location in the background, which is important enough for a "smart" thermostat designed to synchronize the temperature of the house with your whereabouts. The Nest app crashes frequently and even though it works, it does not follow any of Google's design languages.

The Nest Transition FAQ page asks "What will happen to the Nest app?" and gives a short answer of "At the moment, the Nest app will continue to be available." Google could have answered this question with a lot of flowery language about the quality of the Nest app and how it allows users to take more advantage of their smart home ecosystem experience, but this answer instead gives the impression that the Nest app will be dropped as soon as Google Home re-implements all its features.

Nest Aware vs. Google One

Another overlap is with cloud storage subscriptions, where Nest uses Nest Aware and Google One. Nest Aware lets you store Nest Cam video footage online for $ 5 to $ 30 a month, depending on the video history. Google One is an additional sale for more storage on your Google Account. A basic Google account has 15GB of storage for Gmail, Drive, documents and photos, and Google One offers upgrades starting at 100GB for $ 2 per month and at stratospheric prices, like 30 terabytes for $ 300. per month.

Doubling subscriptions to storage resources would be pretty lame, but since Nest products will start using a Google Account and Google One is for more storage on your Google Account, it would make sense for Google One to give you more information. 39, storage space for video footage from the camera. Google offers other subscription products, but these are still intended for content, such as YouTube without advertising, YouTube TV or streaming Google Music. In these cases, Google pays a third for content and this money needs somewhere.

RIP Nest the company, hello Google Nest

While Google wanted to make the presentation of Google's Nest Hub Max a positive presentation of Google I / O, it seems we are witnessing the end of Nest. The new "Google Nest" will be all the time from Google, and anything that is not a Google device, app or service built by Google now appears as an inherited item. At one point, it seems that only the mark will be left.

I have seen Nest product launches multiple times, and each time the company explained that Nest was the most recognized brand in smart homes. It is clear that Google still values ​​the Nest brand and wants to keep the brand in Google, but it must first go through a clumsy and awkward closing process, which will almost certainly be detrimental to the brand's reputation among users. existing (and whoever).

In 2019, Google experienced a wave of product shutdowns and you can add "Works with Nest" to the list of recent murders by Google, with Google Inbox, Google+. Google Hangouts, Google Music and Chromecast Audio.