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Comment by deprave | Hacker News Reader

I cannot understand why anyone would buy hardware from Google. Chromecast for $35 a pop is as much as I'd be willing to pay from something that they could arbitrarily shut down.

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The "can be shutoff at any moment" problem is a huge problem for just about all hardware startups these days. Such huge reliances on cloud services. It's ridiculous.

Yes but most hardware startups have a single product and will put their entire companies effort towards keeping things going. If Google gets bored with a project you can kiss it goodbye.

At least Google will likely still be around in 12 months.

Guess what hardware startups might do once they end up on http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/?

Like how I get a popup notice on my Samsung TV every few days about they're shutting off various apps like Skype on their smart platform?

$35 is about the right amount of money a smart TV enabler.

I really wish TV mfgs still offered dumb TVs, even for like $20 less. The features on the many I've played with (access to a lab with hundreds of smart TVs) range from "unbearable delay changing the volume + UI crashes randomly trying to switch set off" (yes this seriously happens on a newer production Samsung with the little click stick selector on the back as the ONLY physical button; turning it off requires clicking then scrolling to "power" and clicking again) to "noticeably slower but not unbearable when changing volume".

I really preferred my TVs to be as dumb and as responsive as possible, but I know that many people won't buy a dongle for the "smart" functionality of their TV has it built in, even if the experience is awful, upgrades are few and far between, support ends after a year, and the internals powering the smartness are non-upgradeable low-to-midrange smartphone boards on their new >$1000 set. Also, getting a >$10,000 TV doesn't get you much better software or much better smart guts, which surprised me at first, but I guess it makes sense; they're not going to spend millions in R&D for the products that sell in small numbers.

Non-smart TVs are prevalent everywhere I shop

I have Rokus - don't need much else

They sort of do - look for "commercial signage" displays. Prices are similar to consumer models, and the "smart" crap is either removed outright or greatly reduced (I saw a number of versions with built in slideshow functions, but that's about it)

Smart TVs are universally awful.

I bought my first "smart" tv last year, made by Sony. When it works, it's a great tv but every now and then an app will temporarily lock up and you have to wait 10-15 seconds for the tv to come back to life. Or other times it locks up entirely and I need to manually power cycle it. It's an Android TV.

I do enjoy some of the app integration (hulu, netflix, amazon), but at this point, I'd rather have a stable tv and use a roku instead.

Im curious how you think they'll shut your router off?

Certainly, they could turn cloud based features such as this off, but the router itself?

What would stop them?

EDIT: @sohailk, think you're missing the point, which is not if it's logical, but what literally would stop them from doing this?

(Hardware, legal, etc.)

common sense? locking down unnecessary software features is bad but not gamebreaking. locking down hardware would just be crazy.

OnHub runs (effectively) ChromeOS and self-updates, so in theory Google could send an update that bricks it but they'd have to be stupid to invite that class action lawsuit.

Your question rests on the assumption that it's "my" router, since it's a piece of physical hardware that I bought, and that it will continue to function after they shut down the cloud-based features that they used to lure customers in and justify the price tag.

Past experience - most recently with Revolv - suggests that your assumption is wrong and Google has no problem bricking the device instead of letting it function without cloud support.

In other words: When Google shuts down a product, it's 100% shut down. Hence, I cannot understand why anyone would buy non-throwaway hardware from them.

what computing hardware have you bought and not thrown away at some point?

I expect infrastructure hardware like routers to be used and supported for a minimum of five years. Google changes its policies and dumps products on a whim. It cannot be trusted with such hardware. Phones, sure. Chromecast, fine. Anything that has longer life expectancies, never.

My understanding is that OnHub routers are managed through a mobile app via Google's cloud. If Google end-of-lifed that service, owners would have no way to manage their routers.

The mobile app connects to the router directly not thru Google' cloud service.

The only thing that probably relies on Google's service is their "Send Feedback" feature.

What if they remove the app from the Play Store? Then I have to download the apk from random web sites and trust that they aren't trojaned?

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