Google's Changes to Nest Thoughts
I'll start by saying that I don't know what factors, internal or external may have driven this change. I can only hope that there was some internal friction which justified the move. These comments are made from the obvious point of view of not knowing exactly what lead to this. And thus, there may be perfectly justifiable reasons. That being said, I will continue.
I think that this move fundamentally sucks the wind out of, not only Nest but also Smart Homes in general, or at least in their common, cloud connected form.
There have been a lot of Smart Home technologies of late that have gone under and kind of soured the marketplace. And while Nest isn't going under, the changes are very similar. And Nest was basically the product which launched the consumer smart home.
Basically, the worst of it is the retirement of the "Works With Nest" program, which included REST API allowing 3rd parties to interact with their Nest devices.
Saying that "we'll make sure Alexa still works" doesn't even begin to address the problem. Alexa was barely a "Works With Nest" integration. Yes, it used the APIs. But, it was more another interface than a deeper, more intelligent integration.
Why does this matter? Because Nest isn't a complete Smart Home solution. And the components which it offers are neither particularly competitive or feature complete. In short, even if you have the money to kit out your home entirely in Google Nest products you'd still be missing components like Smart Lighting, Smart Shades, Smart Vents and so on. Many will argue that Ecobee offers better functionality in a Smart Thermostat and higher quality temperature sensors.
In short, you will still need product lines. And you will ultimately need multiple hubs to properly manage them and maximize their effectiveness.
And that is where "Works With Nest" came in. It was restrictive, and far from perfect. But, right now I have Home Assistant running on my laptop downstairs which allows me to control ALL of my Smart Home equipment with MUCH finer detail of control than something like Google Home or Google Assistant allow. In fact, I can't even use my MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener without an additional paid subscription, but which I can use for free with Home Assistant.
When they pull the plug on that service, if an equivalent solution isn't provided... I will be switching companies. Plain and simple.
I'll probably keep the Nest Thermostat. I don't actually use Home Assistant to drive the thermostat and I rarely care about the temperature. But, then again, I do heavily use the Nest app to control the Thermostat, so, if they retire that it will really depend on what it is replaced with.
I have a Nest Cam as my other entrant in that field and I was considering a Next x Yale lock for the front door. I now, won't be buying a Nest x Yale, instead I'll probably go with a second August lock for the other door.
On the Camera front, I'll be looking for something which streams locally. The beef with Nest was that their detection logic sucks to the point where I actually have TensorFlow in Home Assistant doing the detection for me. I paid for the subscription simply for the longer storage period. Since TensorFlow seems a lot better than any paid service, and all I really need the cloud for is storage, I'm actually a lot happier just storing locally. Once I own the data, I can always write something to push the latest to the cloud if I want that extra redundancy.
Basically, the end story here is, if a company with the backing of Google can simply choose to totally sabotage their ecosystem, even if they don't need to. Then anyone can. It shows the complete and total lack of commitment companies hold to actually revolutionizing anything. So, while there is still hope for Smart Home products, moves like this definitely provide a push towards which provide more direct control over the devices.
I get that there was some concern over how Nest managed security and data. But, let's not pretend that this couldn't be addressed within the service itself. Certain calls could be deprecated and replaced with more secure versions that either enforced stricter security or sent less information. And, let's also not pretend that the path they chose was the easier one. I would gather that the approach they are opting to take is MUCH more labour intensive than simply patching what was there.
At the end of the day, if you were attempting to use Nest products within a more integrated Smart Home system, then Google's actions here are no different than Nest going out of business and shutting everything down.
From what we've seen so far, (and there may be more to address this), the changes will remove what the Nest API's enabled and won't replace them with a comparable service. Some functionality may be available through Google Assistant, but it will require a total rewrite of integrations and likely won't include a great deal of what Nest provided, thus making a great many things impossible to recreate.
I hope I'm wrong. But, I would think that if Google had planned any such replacement it would have been front and center to address any concerns. This was unveiled at a developer conference after all. Undoubtedly, some of the people in the audience were developers for Works With Nest.
I'm starting to pin my hopes on IKEA.
I think that this move fundamentally sucks the wind out of, not only Nest but also Smart Homes in general, or at least in their common, cloud connected form.
There have been a lot of Smart Home technologies of late that have gone under and kind of soured the marketplace. And while Nest isn't going under, the changes are very similar. And Nest was basically the product which launched the consumer smart home.
Basically, the worst of it is the retirement of the "Works With Nest" program, which included REST API allowing 3rd parties to interact with their Nest devices.
Saying that "we'll make sure Alexa still works" doesn't even begin to address the problem. Alexa was barely a "Works With Nest" integration. Yes, it used the APIs. But, it was more another interface than a deeper, more intelligent integration.
Why does this matter? Because Nest isn't a complete Smart Home solution. And the components which it offers are neither particularly competitive or feature complete. In short, even if you have the money to kit out your home entirely in Google Nest products you'd still be missing components like Smart Lighting, Smart Shades, Smart Vents and so on. Many will argue that Ecobee offers better functionality in a Smart Thermostat and higher quality temperature sensors.
In short, you will still need product lines. And you will ultimately need multiple hubs to properly manage them and maximize their effectiveness.
And that is where "Works With Nest" came in. It was restrictive, and far from perfect. But, right now I have Home Assistant running on my laptop downstairs which allows me to control ALL of my Smart Home equipment with MUCH finer detail of control than something like Google Home or Google Assistant allow. In fact, I can't even use my MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener without an additional paid subscription, but which I can use for free with Home Assistant.
When they pull the plug on that service, if an equivalent solution isn't provided... I will be switching companies. Plain and simple.
I'll probably keep the Nest Thermostat. I don't actually use Home Assistant to drive the thermostat and I rarely care about the temperature. But, then again, I do heavily use the Nest app to control the Thermostat, so, if they retire that it will really depend on what it is replaced with.
I have a Nest Cam as my other entrant in that field and I was considering a Next x Yale lock for the front door. I now, won't be buying a Nest x Yale, instead I'll probably go with a second August lock for the other door.
On the Camera front, I'll be looking for something which streams locally. The beef with Nest was that their detection logic sucks to the point where I actually have TensorFlow in Home Assistant doing the detection for me. I paid for the subscription simply for the longer storage period. Since TensorFlow seems a lot better than any paid service, and all I really need the cloud for is storage, I'm actually a lot happier just storing locally. Once I own the data, I can always write something to push the latest to the cloud if I want that extra redundancy.
Basically, the end story here is, if a company with the backing of Google can simply choose to totally sabotage their ecosystem, even if they don't need to. Then anyone can. It shows the complete and total lack of commitment companies hold to actually revolutionizing anything. So, while there is still hope for Smart Home products, moves like this definitely provide a push towards which provide more direct control over the devices.
I get that there was some concern over how Nest managed security and data. But, let's not pretend that this couldn't be addressed within the service itself. Certain calls could be deprecated and replaced with more secure versions that either enforced stricter security or sent less information. And, let's also not pretend that the path they chose was the easier one. I would gather that the approach they are opting to take is MUCH more labour intensive than simply patching what was there.
At the end of the day, if you were attempting to use Nest products within a more integrated Smart Home system, then Google's actions here are no different than Nest going out of business and shutting everything down.
From what we've seen so far, (and there may be more to address this), the changes will remove what the Nest API's enabled and won't replace them with a comparable service. Some functionality may be available through Google Assistant, but it will require a total rewrite of integrations and likely won't include a great deal of what Nest provided, thus making a great many things impossible to recreate.
I hope I'm wrong. But, I would think that if Google had planned any such replacement it would have been front and center to address any concerns. This was unveiled at a developer conference after all. Undoubtedly, some of the people in the audience were developers for Works With Nest.
I'm starting to pin my hopes on IKEA.
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