Wednesday 15 January 2014

Nest and Google: Closed and Cloud

No blog dedicated to the Internet of Things would be complete without some kind of reasonably timely analysis of the recent purchase of Nest by Google...

Here's a pretty good summary of the basics, on Mashable, to save me repeating it all. And here's a good article on the issues with the automatic features of Nest, and the infamous software upgrade - keep reading into the comments.

My view is that Google has been gradually getting deeper into all of our lives, and this is an obvious next step for them: right into our homes. Nest is another service that depends on remote servers for their normal operation. They can collect lots of information about you and your family.

In my Manifesto for the Internet of Things, and in a follow up article, I argued that the IoT should be open and local, not closed and remote.

So in that light, even though not unexpected, this development is not a good direction for the Internet of Things from the end-user's perspective. But you need to have real, substantial examples of what you don't want, in order to focus your mind on what you do want.

There are interesting, challenging and exciting times ahead..

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