Privacy concerns may have factored into it, but I suspect it was more to do with signaling the natural relationship between home automation devices, much like the way they positioned it so that "YouTube" (video streaming service) is acquiring Twitch (video streaming service).
Google has acquired Nest... so now Google has also acquired Dropcam
Nest wasn't an acquihire or an assimilation, but was always stated as a separately operating organization. As such, it makes total sense that Nest acquisitions are held as being under Nest.
If HBO acquired a show or a studio, you don't say that Time Warner acquired it. If NBC acquires a property, you don't say that Comcast acquired it. These arms lengths subsidiaries are at arms length for good logistical reasons.
Further it's interesting how much a privacy concern people think Google is on HN, yet in normal life the amount of trust in Google is...actually shocking. I mean Google makes no bones about telling you, endlessly, how much they know about you. They don't hide it.
From the January 3 "What's your prediction for 2014?" thread:
> The next Nest product will be a home security system. If you already own Nest thermostats or smoke detectors, their motion sensors will do double-duty as security alarms.
I had a Dropcam and was excited for its remote monitoring capabilities. As a camera it is excellent and the cloud recording is really well done. I set it up and left for vacation for 3 weeks. During this time, I got so many notifications of activity (at least 20 per day) that it rendered it completely useless. It's an interesting idea but when I got my first notification of activity I got so scared someone had broken into my house I was freaking out. By the end of my vacation I just turned off the notification altogether and returned it when I came home.
I don't want to spread any unwarranted negativity here, but does anyone know how this fits into Nest's business model? I get Dropcam's business model of letting people check in on their home when they are on the road, on vacation etc, but hasn't Nest's business model been data mining from the very beginning? How does placing cameras in customers' homes fit into this model?
I also wonder about the privacy policy question. Okay, so they won't share data with Google, but what are the restrictions of Nest employees to check out your cameras? At the very least, there are no technical limitations here and it's all a matter of policy.
Again, not intending to spread negativity but it would be interesting to see some discussion around these potential issues. Although I do hand over ridiculous amounts of private information to web companies (in reality, most of what's going on inside my head; there's plenty in my web-hosted diary that I've never told anyone), there is somewhere I would draw the line. And I think that line would go at uploading to the cloud what is going on inside my home, regardless of what the privacy policy says.
I think it falls into a sort of "home automation/monitoring" model. As we move further into the "Internet of Things" spectrum, Google and Nest are just securing their place. Think about how Microsoft and Sony's gaming platforms continue to build on the idea of being the only device you need for your TV. I wouldn't be surprised if Nest sought to acquire someone like Fitbit for the same thing, monitoring health/fitness via the bracelet or weight scale; or an automated garage door opener company (if they did monitoring/diagnostic work when the car is in the garage).
Nest's business model is to sell a product for a profit. From that perspective, it's the same as Dropcam.
More than the business model though, Nest's goal seems to be to use sensor data and usage patterns to provide home automation with as little management as possible. Dropcam is essentially just another sensor - they're already doing things like recognizing people in the video feed. It's a way to get more data into nest's algorithms, and to get sensors into more areas of your home.
I work for a startup providing a similar product to Dropcam. The difference being we are free, and you can choose from a variety of supported cameras (we have ~ 30 supported cameras).
$9.99 a month or $99 a year for a rolling 7 days of video. I guess most of that is a still, unattended image. Amazon cloud storage is cheap. It seems very expensive to me.
For example. My flatmate has a child. His ex-partner is prone to make stories in her head and go to the police with that. I'd be keen to host the kid until the father comes back from work, but I'm afraid of the ex-partner's accusations. I'm looking for a cloud storage service to store those hours for a few years, not to serve as legal proof, but to reassure the ex- that nothing weird happened. With Dropcam, that would cost me a few thousands dollars of storage per year, or am I mistaken?
I think you can export the video snippets and save them to local storage. This would allow you to keep as much video as you want, basically for free. It would be nice to have it linked in to Google Drive so that you can store selected video snippets there.
Likely the timing is because of stock exchange regulations. Google is publicly traded company so announcing it on different time may gave someone "unfair advantage".
Doing that 5pm Friday after market closes give everyone 2 days to process that information.
Donna: What’s take out the trash day?
Josh: Friday.
Donna: I mean, what is it?
Josh: Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not
wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.
Donna: Why do you do it in a lump?
Josh: Instead of one at a time?
Donna: I’d think you’d want to spread them out.
Josh: They’ve got X column inches to fill, right? They’re
going to fill them no matter what.
Donna: Yes.
Josh: So if we give them one story, that story’s X column
inches.
Donna: And if we give them five stories …
Josh: They’re a fifth the size.
Donna: Why do you do it on Friday?
Josh: Because no one reads the paper on Saturday.
Donna: You guys are real populists, aren’t you?
There are also other reasons, maybe they were rushing to complete the deal by EOD, if you try to keep it quiet over the weekend, might leak out in a haphazard way, want to release outside market hours, etc.
Not too coincidentally, a lot of the SEC filings with really bad news seem to happen in the last minute of filing activity on Friday. (Not that this particular announcement is very material or bad news)
If they need the whole weekend to find the right tone to explain this acquisition, yes. Looking forward to seeing how Google handles the privacy concerns on this...
You mean Google is. Remember when Schneier said no too long ago that "Google is in the surveillance business"? Even I didn't take it so literally back then, but it turns out he was just slightly ahead of time with that characterization.
Misread that as "Schmidt said" and was surprised but not totally shocked (e.x. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place")
so if google owns nest and nest nad owns dropcam if you have a dropcam and the NSA wants to come blackbag your house can they delete the video off the cloudhosting warnetlessly?
Perhaps they were concerned about leaving Dropcam as a/to a competitor and taking on Logitech; whilst acquiring Dropcam they can take out 2 competitors in one go as no-one else seems to want to take on Logitech? [Pure speculation].
Because the Logitech brand is fugly, that ship is sinking and can be scooped up for less if they care to. This wasn't about technology, brand and customers.
The reason for this acquisition is clear. Its why Nest was bought, its why Dropcam was bought. For Eric Shmidt's whole life his brother would turn down the thermostat and Eric would be too cold. He would accuse his brother and his brother would play innocent. It was infuriating.
But now. Billions of dollars later. Finally, Eric will always know who is screwing with his radiator.
Some interesting quotes from Dropcam's CEO last year:
“Our business model is very straightforward. I think if your business model is not straightforward, it veers into potentially being unethical, if you look at things that are quote-unquote ‘free.’ None of the people who work here want to work on something that works like that. They look at it as tricking the user, when [a company is] turning around and using some part of the user’s data to make revenue."
and
"He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days."
He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days.
WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younger! I hate cooking and it is ridiculously expensive to buy food with my dietary constraints in the open market. Especially food that is not only delicious but also healthy in the long term.
Why is there this utterly misguided hatred against "company food"?
Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday (remember, I hate to cook).
Plus, nobody forces you to eat that food, if you really prefer cooking your own food or buying it from elsewhere, keep doing that.
I really feel that good, healthy food is an awesome incentive and stigmatizing it reeks of a bloody first world problem.
I don't really mind staying late at the office (with has gigabit nLayer, a 4K monitor, free drinks and snacks, etc.) vs. at home (which has comcast, and is pretty small). The commute between the locations is a pain, but otherwise I have no real difference between "being online doing whatever I want to do" at home vs. at the office.
Right now, I'm working on a TC article and some conference talks on independent research. I'll probably drive home once the traffic is done. I'll go to my co-presenter's house Saturday night to work on the talks again.
The "work vs. personal" distinction is really secondary to me, compared to "stuff I want to do, vs. stuff I'm forced to do"; work-related projects are just as often "want to" as home projects are "forced to".
I'd gladly work an 11 hour day at a company that provided food if two of those hours were meals (lunch and dinner) and another hour was time spent in the gym/playing games. That's 8 hours of work, and three hours of free recreation that would have cost me a non-trivial sum of money elsewhere. I just wouldn't want that to be expected.
> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days."
Is there actually honestly anyone out there who doesn't think so? I mean, is it really disguised even? We give you stuff, you make your life revolve around the company. It's a very straightforward exchange in my opinion.
Hell, people have directly said to me in interviews "We want this company to be all you think about" when explaining why they'd prefer to hire me full-time rather than part-time.
> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days."
I can't agree with this, and I have some experience with both sides of it.
I have worked at a company that does not provide much of anything in the way of perks (Amazon) and a company which is known for them (Google). I've NEVER felt pressured to put in more hours at Google, while at Amazon it was more or less a constant of existence.
As with all anecdotes, your mileage may vary, but I think it has little to do with the perks and more to do with broader company culture. At Amazon, the lack of perks and long hours become badges of honor that you share with your peers. Looking back on it, it feels rather toxic.
Funny how quickly things change when someone offers to hand you a lot of money. Granted, someone's opinions can change, but I feel like the first quote especially describes a personal philosophical value that wouldn't change on a whim.
I hate to be cynical, but I think this statement is a well calculated PR move to make people comfortable with one of the most invasive possible devices there is. You are giving Google access to an always-on camera in your house!
[+] [-] jakozaur|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gress|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joliv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personZ|11 years ago|reply
Nest wasn't an acquihire or an assimilation, but was always stated as a separately operating organization. As such, it makes total sense that Nest acquisitions are held as being under Nest.
If HBO acquired a show or a studio, you don't say that Time Warner acquired it. If NBC acquires a property, you don't say that Comcast acquired it. These arms lengths subsidiaries are at arms length for good logistical reasons.
Further it's interesting how much a privacy concern people think Google is on HN, yet in normal life the amount of trust in Google is...actually shocking. I mean Google makes no bones about telling you, endlessly, how much they know about you. They don't hide it.
[+] [-] raldi|11 years ago|reply
> The next Nest product will be a home security system. If you already own Nest thermostats or smoke detectors, their motion sensors will do double-duty as security alarms.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008786
[+] [-] steven2012|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marvin|11 years ago|reply
I also wonder about the privacy policy question. Okay, so they won't share data with Google, but what are the restrictions of Nest employees to check out your cameras? At the very least, there are no technical limitations here and it's all a matter of policy.
Again, not intending to spread negativity but it would be interesting to see some discussion around these potential issues. Although I do hand over ridiculous amounts of private information to web companies (in reality, most of what's going on inside my head; there's plenty in my web-hosted diary that I've never told anyone), there is somewhere I would draw the line. And I think that line would go at uploading to the cloud what is going on inside my home, regardless of what the privacy policy says.
[+] [-] tsumnia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|11 years ago|reply
More than the business model though, Nest's goal seems to be to use sensor data and usage patterns to provide home automation with as little management as possible. Dropcam is essentially just another sensor - they're already doing things like recognizing people in the video feed. It's a way to get more data into nest's algorithms, and to get sensors into more areas of your home.
[+] [-] martin_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dokem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domlebo70|11 years ago|reply
What do you guys think? http://www.cammy.com/
[+] [-] ARussell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|11 years ago|reply
https://nest.com/press/nest-and-dropcam-sign-acquisition-agr...
[+] [-] aragot|11 years ago|reply
$9.99 a month or $99 a year for a rolling 7 days of video. I guess most of that is a still, unattended image. Amazon cloud storage is cheap. It seems very expensive to me.
For example. My flatmate has a child. His ex-partner is prone to make stories in her head and go to the police with that. I'd be keen to host the kid until the father comes back from work, but I'm afraid of the ex-partner's accusations. I'm looking for a cloud storage service to store those hours for a few years, not to serve as legal proof, but to reassure the ex- that nothing weird happened. With Dropcam, that would cost me a few thousands dollars of storage per year, or am I mistaken?
[+] [-] Corrado|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakozaur|11 years ago|reply
Doing that 5pm Friday after market closes give everyone 2 days to process that information.
[+] [-] RockyMcNuts|11 years ago|reply
From the West Wing - http://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/
There are also other reasons, maybe they were rushing to complete the deal by EOD, if you try to keep it quiet over the weekend, might leak out in a haphazard way, want to release outside market hours, etc.Not too coincidentally, a lot of the SEC filings with really bad news seem to happen in the last minute of filing activity on Friday. (Not that this particular announcement is very material or bad news)
[+] [-] yarri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkempe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] higherpurpose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojbyrne|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evan_|11 years ago|reply
http://www.joystiq.com/2014/05/18/report-youtube-acquires-tw...
so apparently this is a thing that happens now.
[+] [-] stevengg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esbonsa|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uptown|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billwilliams|11 years ago|reply
But now. Billions of dollars later. Finally, Eric will always know who is screwing with his radiator.
[+] [-] esbonsa|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gravity13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgas|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmduke|11 years ago|reply
“Our business model is very straightforward. I think if your business model is not straightforward, it veers into potentially being unethical, if you look at things that are quote-unquote ‘free.’ None of the people who work here want to work on something that works like that. They look at it as tricking the user, when [a company is] turning around and using some part of the user’s data to make revenue."
and
"He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days."
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/04/23/dropcam-ceos...
[+] [-] shiven|11 years ago|reply
WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younger! I hate cooking and it is ridiculously expensive to buy food with my dietary constraints in the open market. Especially food that is not only delicious but also healthy in the long term.
Why is there this utterly misguided hatred against "company food"?
Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday (remember, I hate to cook).
Plus, nobody forces you to eat that food, if you really prefer cooking your own food or buying it from elsewhere, keep doing that.
I really feel that good, healthy food is an awesome incentive and stigmatizing it reeks of a bloody first world problem.
[+] [-] rdl|11 years ago|reply
Right now, I'm working on a TC article and some conference talks on independent research. I'll probably drive home once the traffic is done. I'll go to my co-presenter's house Saturday night to work on the talks again.
The "work vs. personal" distinction is really secondary to me, compared to "stuff I want to do, vs. stuff I'm forced to do"; work-related projects are just as often "want to" as home projects are "forced to".
[+] [-] cenhyperion|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swizec|11 years ago|reply
Is there actually honestly anyone out there who doesn't think so? I mean, is it really disguised even? We give you stuff, you make your life revolve around the company. It's a very straightforward exchange in my opinion.
Hell, people have directly said to me in interviews "We want this company to be all you think about" when explaining why they'd prefer to hire me full-time rather than part-time.
[+] [-] jsolson|11 years ago|reply
I can't agree with this, and I have some experience with both sides of it.
I have worked at a company that does not provide much of anything in the way of perks (Amazon) and a company which is known for them (Google). I've NEVER felt pressured to put in more hours at Google, while at Amazon it was more or less a constant of existence.
As with all anecdotes, your mileage may vary, but I think it has little to do with the perks and more to do with broader company culture. At Amazon, the lack of perks and long hours become badges of honor that you share with your peers. Looking back on it, it feels rather toxic.
[+] [-] npizzolato|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|11 years ago|reply