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Nest is ‘not for sale’ says its new CEO, will deliver on current product road map

Nest Thermostat

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Following the news that Tony Fadell was leaving Nest, questions immediately surfaced about his successor Marwan Fawaz. In a letter (obtained by The Verge) sent to all Nest employees, Fawaz stated that the company is “not for sale” and will continue on its current product roadmap. He also reiterates that the company’s plan is to scale up and reach more customers.


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Alleged Nest engineer: Company is on ‘deathwatch,’ employees ‘crying in bathrooms’

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Recent reports have painted a dire picture for Nest, with executives reportedly leaving, funding potentially on the verge of being cut, and much more. Now, a supposed Nest engineer has taken to Reddit to voice some frustrations. The engineer, who didn’t disclose his or her name, says that the company is “on deathwatch” thanks to “dire” sale and growth figures and no new innovation since the acquisition occurred.


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Report: Nest’s future increasingly unclear under Alphabet as it continues to underperform

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According to a new report from Re/code, Alphabet-owned Nest is under-performing and its future at Google could be in jeopardy. The report, citing three people with knowledge of the matter, says that Nest generated $340 million in sales last year and while that’s solid for a company focused mainly on Internet-connected thermostats, it’s not as strong as what Google hoped initially.


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Former Dropcam CEO drops bomb on Tony Fadell’s version of Nest acquisition

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In The Information‘s recent article about Nest and continued strife within the Alphabet subsidiary following a struggle-filled acquisition of Dropcam, Tony Fadell was dismissive of any blame for the departure of more than 50 Dropcam employees and their leader, Greg Duffy. “A lot of the employees were not as good as we hoped,” he said. He went on, saying Dropcam was “a very small team and unfortunately it wasn’t a very experienced team.”

Obviously this didn’t sit well with the former CEO of the San Francisco-based security cam company, who left Nest after a feud with the father-of-the-iPod over his brash ‘tyrant bureaucrat’ leadership style. And he took to his Medium blog this morning to chime in…


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Dropcam’s co-founder says that Tony Fadell runs Nest like a ‘tyrant bureaucrat’

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A new report (paywalled) from The Information today told us that Google is working on a competitor to the Amazon Echo, but it also detailed in-depth Nest’s struggle as an Alphabet subsidiary and the apparent horror that was its acquisition of smart home security camera company Dropcam. Before eventually ending his time at the Alphabet company, Dropcam co-founder Greg Duffy apparently told Nest CEO Tony Fadell that he runs the company like a “tyrant bureaucrat”…


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Nest CEO Tony Fadell compares Google’s self-driving car to a “professional driver”

Google driverless car prototype
Tony Fadell, often called the “father of the iPod” and now CEO of Alphabet’s Nest, appeared on Bloomberg TV today to discuss his time at Apple, his current effort in the connected home industry and the future of mobility. He briefly talked about Google’s self-driving car project and confirmed he spent some time in the vehicles. He compared the experience to being driven by a “professional driver”.
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Google Glass still has a future as a consumer device, claim two members of development team [Poll]

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Two of the original team members behind Google Glass have insisted that the device still has a future for consumers, despite the company now pitching it exclusively at the enterprise market.

In an interview at the Computer History Museum, Thad Starner, a professor at Georgia Tech and a technical lead on Glass, and Greg Priest-Dorman, a systems administrator at Google X, said that the press had “misunderstood and overpromised” what Google was trying to achieve, reports Re/code … 
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Tony Fadell implies in BBC interview that the Google Glass Explorer Edition may have been a mistake

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Nest founder and former Apple iPod lead designer Tony Fadell has intimated in a BBC interview that the decision to make an early version of Google Glass available for public sale may have been a mistake.

He said that while Google has always launched beta versions of its products and gathered feedback from users, there was a very big difference between software and hardware.

If you are only doing services based on electrons, you can iterate quickly, test it, and modify it and get it right. But when you are dealing with actual atoms – hardware – and you have to get manufacturing lines and it takes a year or more to develop that product, you better understand what it is and what it’s trying to do and specifically what it’s not going to do.

Customers have to spend money to buy those atoms. They want something that delivers value or you end up with a real disappointment and you can spoil the market.

He was, however, “very bullish” about the product, and believes it has a big future … 
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Nest’s plans for a Dropcam successor possibly outed by new FCC documents

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Nest sent out press invitations last week to an event on June 17th, and we speculated that it might mean that the company is ready to announce its first Dropcam successor since being acquired by Google in June of 2014. Now, thanks to an FCC filing that we’ve uncovered (published to the FCC website on May 28th), it seems more likely that the company is getting ready to announce the next generation of its security camera…
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Nest founder Tony Fadell talks design and habituation in newly-uploaded Ted Talk

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Tony Fadell, founder of Nest and current head of Google Glass, presented in March at TED2015 to share his thoughts and experience designing for Apple, Nest, and now Google. A few months after he first gave the talk, it has now been uploaded to YouTube and is open and viewable by everyone…

He doesn’t spend any time talking about Glass, unsurprisingly, but he does talk about now Google-owned Nest. He spends several minutes talking about how to notice things around you—things that have become daily pains—that have may be victim of habituation and worth finding a solution for.

It’s interesting and worth a watch:

With Google Glass redesign, Tony Fadell says there are no ‘sacred cows’

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Tony Fadell, one of many fathers of the iPod and founder of Nest, was put in charge of the Glass project when the company stopped selling the “Explorer Edition” of the device in January earlier this year. While it was assumed that this would mean that Google was giving the project a restart (and, in fact, Google confirmed this to be the case during its Q4 earnings call), Tony Fadell has recently came out publicly to reiterate this point…


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Google Glass head Tony Fadell talks Internet of things, proactive technology in recent essay

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Tony Fadell, CEO of Nest and head of Google’s Glass division, recently published an essay at The Wall Street Journal highlighting his thoughts on the future of the Internet:

Today, most technology is reactive. We ask a question and get an answer in return. It’s useful, but it’s also limiting. What if we don’t ask the right question? What if we don’t know we need to ask a question in the first place?

In the future, more conversations will happen proactively. In the case of my water-skiing accident, my smartphone could have combined existing information—including GPS data (on a lake, moving quickly), my medical history (four joint-related surgeries), the temperature of the environment (cold) and flexibility data from my fitness tracker—to predict that I was considering water skiing, calculate the odds of my getting injured, and advise me against it before I even got in the water.

The whole essay is wroth a read, with Fadell telling the story of how he tore a hamstring while water skiing and how a more connected Internet could have prevented it. He doesn’t make any comments on Glass, but he does call out Google’s Project Loon in reference to technologies that will help bring an Internet connection to the 4.4 billion people without one.

Google Glass 2.0: New patent gives us the most likely depiction we’ve seen yet

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Google is hard at work designing the next hardware iteration of Glass, but not many details have surfaced regarding what the next generation be capable of nor what it will look like. Patents are definitely not the most reliable source of “leaks,” but sometimes they can give us a good overarching idea of the direction a company might be headed. A new patent published recently gives us yet another peek at what the next Google Glass might look like, and this looks more believable than anything we’ve seen up to this point…
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Google reportedly won’t release the next version of Glass until it’s ‘perfect’

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Google has said repeatedly since the company graduated the project out of Google[x] that new iterations of Glass will indeed be coming at some point in the future, and that the team behind the wearable display device is still “committed to Glass.” But how is Google going to approach the product going forward?

According to an adviser to Tony Fadell (the previous Apple product executive who now oversees the project), the device is not going to get the same public experimentation treatment that the first version did, and Fadell won’t be releasing the next version of Glass until it’s “perfect.”


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Don’t believe the unbelievers; Google Glass is alive and well

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Be sure to also read part 2: Don’t believe the unbelievers (Part 2); Google Glass has succeeded through Glass at Work

After seeing the countless doomsday articles over the last couple of weeks, I can’t help but wonder whether or not Google regrets the way they announced the retirement of the Glass Explorer Program and graduation of Glass out of Google[x]. The headline of the announcement, reading “We’re graduating from Google[x] labs” was nothing like the headlines of those that reported the news. Instead of reporting that the device was “graduating” out of Google’s experimental product lab and into its own division (under Tony Fadell’s leadership no less), headlines reported of Glass being a “failed innovation,” as being “killed off,” and blatantly called the project “dead”.

Google didn’t say any of these things. Sure, there is absolutely room to criticize various aspects of the Explorer Program, but Google is moving on from that. That’s what this announcement was about. Google has decided to put all of its resources and focus into the next generation of the Glass project, and meanwhile the world is claiming its demise before what’s next has even been seen. I understand that many objections against Glass are moreso objections against head-worn computing in general, but arguments claiming the overall death of the augmented reality experiment I believe are also premature. And not only is augmented and holographic head-worn computing not dead, but evidence points to it being on the brink of a very real evolution.


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Google ending its Glass Explorer program ahead of new version under Tony Fadell’s leadership

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Update: Google has made an official blog post detailing the changes to the Glass project. More information below.

It looks like Google may finally be preparing Glass for primetime as a number of changes around the company’s heads-up display product were revealed today. Most notably, the Glass project will be moving from the experimental Google X group to its own unit under the leadership of Tony Fadell, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Next of note, Google will end the current run of its Glass Explorers program on January 19th, removing the current version of Glass from sale to individuals; however, the WSJ includes that businesses and developers interested in purchasing Glass can still do so through an application process. The Glass at Work program, which has continued to grow, will live on beyond the Explorer Program’s imminent demise.
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$50 off Nest Black Friday Now: Learning Thermostat: $199, Dropcams: $99

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From 9to5Toys.com where we are rounding up all the best Black Friday deals we have two huge headliners on the almost never discounted Nest product line (that Google picked up along with iPod-father Tony Fadell earlier this year):

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The Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd generation) for $199 shipped. That’s $50 below list and the best price we’ve ever seen.

You can find it at Amazon, Best Buy, Lowes and Abt for $199 for a limited time.

  • The Nest Learning Thermostat remembers what temperatures you like, turns itself down when you’re away and can be controlled from your smartphone, tablet or laptop
  • Auto-Schedule creates a personalized schedule for your home by remembering when you adjust the temperature
  • Auto-Away automatically turns Nest thermostat down when there’s nobody home so you don’t waste energy heating or cooling an empty house
  • Remote control Nest thermostat over Wi-Fi from your smartphone, tablet or laptop
  • Energy History shows you how much energy you’ve used and what affects your energy use most

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The Dropcam Wireless HD Video Monitoring Camera can be found for $99.99 with free shipping. That’s $50 below list and the lowest price we have ever seen on this cloud-based camera/recording system.

Available for $$99 ($50 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.

With a 107° degree field of view and 4x zoom, Dropcam keeps you connected with people, places and pets in sharp 720p HD video.

  • 60 Second Setup – Use your computer to find your Wi-Fi network, live stream in under a minute.
  • High Quality Video – Get into the details with 720p high-definition video.
  • Fast and easy setup – online and securely streaming 720p HD video in 60 seconds.
  • Field of View – 107 degrees diagonal, plus Night Vision and Zoom, means you don’t miss a thing.
  • Cloud Video Recording (CVR) – Review footage and make clips with optional secure offsite recording.
  • Stay connected with Two-Way Talk, Intelligent Alerts, Scheduling and Mobile & Web apps.

Head over to 9to5Toys for the Best Black Friday deals on the web. A little more background on Nest:
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Nest to share some user data with Google, open up third-party development platform

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Google CEO Larry Page (centre) with Nest co-founders Matt Rogers amd Tony Fadell (photo: technologyreview.com)

Google CEO Larry Page (centre) with Nest co-founders Matt Rogers amd Tony Fadell (photo: technologyreview.com)

Google and Nest have big plans for their partnership, the Wall Street Journal reports. The two companies plan to team up to offer a development platform around the Nest learning thermostat and Nest Protect smoke/CO detector in what appears to be the next step in Google’s connected home efforts following the Mountain View company’s $555 million acquisition of Dropcam a few days ago.

The system as it is currently said to exist allows users to issue voice commands to a smartphone to change settings on the Nest lineup or change a house’s temperature based on the owner’s proximity (so the air comes on when you’re almost home). However, the “Works with Nest” program will soon be expanded to support third-party remotes and appliances.


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Tony Fadell is now top dog of hardware at Google (update)

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When Google acquired Nest, the company also picked up the talents of the its CEO, former Apple executive Tony Fadell. Getting settled in at Mountain View, the man who once oversaw the development of the iPod is reportedly making moves at the search giant. According to The Information, Fadell is now is now top dog at Google’s hardware division.


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Future Nest products may not need new hardware, could be just apps, says Fadell

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If you love the idea of smart home technology like Nest, but are concerned about the cost of replacing half the appliances and devices in your home, Nest CEO Tony Fadell has some good news. Speaking at the Re/Code conference, he said that while “you need new hardware to allow things to flourish,” there are many things that could be done with software alone.

 Just like your smartphone has many many apps on it, we think there [could be] many apps in your home but you don’t necessarily need new hardware …


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Google tells the SEC it could soon be serving ads on thermostats and other devices (Update: Google says no ad-based Nest)

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Those who expressed concern about Google’s acquisition of Nest may have have been right: the company has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may choose to serve ads on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

The WSJ reports that Google made the statement in support of its contention that it shouldn’t have to break out ad revenue from mobile devices … 
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Nest pulls Nest Protect smoke detector from sale, remotely disables ‘wave’ feature due to safety hazard

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Nest—which was recently acquired by Google—pulled its Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector from sale today and issued a letter from Tony Fadell, the company’s CEO about a serious potential safety issue that arose in testing. Nest is advising existing owners that a feature on the device that allows users to disable the detector with the wave of a hand will be automatically disabled.

During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated. This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire.


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Video: Google’s Tony Fadell teams up with Richard Branson for Nest parody stunt

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Richard Branson and Tony Fadell

Richard Branson and Tony Fadell

Okay, so Maps isn’t the only Google property kicking off April Fool’s Day on March 31st this year.

Tony Fadell, most known for his role in designing Apple’s iPod and current head of now Google-owned smart appliance company Nest, and Virgin’s founder and chairman Richard Branson have teamed up in an imaginative and rather convincing spoof video announcing a pretend partnership for a product called Total Temperature Control.

The idea is that every seat on Virgin’s airline has its own Nest smart thermostat to control the seat’s environment. It’s almost believable enough until it’s revealed that temperature options include destinations… see for yourself below.


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