Google announced today that they are acquiring the relatively small smart-up but powerful connected device company Nest for $3.2 billion. In the round-up, Google noted that Nest has been offering its best-selling thermostat since 2011 and recently began offering the Protect smoke alarm, which networks with its other devices.
So, what’s the big deal? What will it mean for consumers? Refinery 29’s Gabriel Bell breaks down the deal and explains why smart-home technology will be coming to our humble abode’s faster than you can ever imagine…We’ve included Bell’s key outcomes below but click here to read the entire article.
- Already, Nest’s two flagship products — smartphone and web enabled thermostats and smoke detectors — are in thousands of residences all over the world. The creep and adoption of this Jetson-like tech has been slow but surprisingly steady. The valuation attached to Nest (that is, the price Google paid for it) reflects not its success as a consumer-goods manufacturer but its leadership in the rapidly growing field of smart-home tech. No one is even close.
- The sudden deal has enabled Google (as a corporation) to become the category leader, putting them in a place to become as indispensable in your home as it is to your Internet experience. By buying the one company that’s doing smart-home tech right and reportedly allowing it a measure of autonomy, Google is indicating that it expects rapid growth in this sector and can’t wait years to develop its own native labs.
- What does that mean for you? The lights, heat, air conditioning, and security of the next house you move into may be managed from a Google-developed app on your smartphone or set themselves autonomously based on knowledge of your living habits. Essentially, the home of the future just became three to four years away.
Source: Refinery 29/Tech Crunch