Well that and the Nest Smart Home hub they decided to kill off a few weeks ago:
Huh? Nest is still a Google property.
Google has just created a hardware division that will handle most of its efforts in that area :
Nexus, Pixel, OnHub, ATAP, Chromecast, consumer hardware, ... they are all going to be integrated in this division instead of being scattered throughout the company.
Glass will also become a part of that division (Nest has been handling it since the end of the explorer program).
Nest will continue to operate independently.
Nest bought out Revolv - and then immediately ceased all sales.
They then kept the servers running for another 18 months, before announcing they were going to shut them down.
Revolv was an also-ran in the home automation stakes - speculation on my part, but there was probably a reason they got bought out instead of raking in the big bucks.
Let's say they sold a few thousand units - do you really think it's worth keeping it running indefinitely? A lot of those people have probably moved on.
I don't have hard data to back this up - but I have a growing suspicion most of the people shrilly screaming the loudest on HN don't actually even own a Revolv - the chances of them being one of those few thousand of couple is pretty small.
That's not the only option. Some alternatives would have been to make it not a SASS reliant brick. Or to open source enough that people could do that work themselves, at least in theory. Or to offer buybacks. I did read:
> Nest is working with customers on a case-by-case basis on compensation, according Burnett. The company would not disclose exactly how Revolv users would be compensated or whether their Revolv devices could be replaced by Nest devices.
( Edit: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/06/nest-to-disable-revolv-hub-mu... )
Any former Revolv users want to disclose how they did/didn't get screwed over, actually?
"If you're a current Revolv customer, please email us at help@revolv.com so we can help you out during this transition and provide you with a refund of the purchase price of your Revolv hub." - http://revolv.com/
At some point, I think it becomes less about "worth" and more about doing the right thing. Is it fair that everyone who bought that device is left holding a worthless chunk of plastic because of the inscrutable whims of various SV tech giants?
If not for reams of legalese nobody reads and yet has to agree to in order to even hook the thing up, it would probably already be illegal in some way.
Don't forget - the "tech giants" you refer to are comprised of people, most of whom have jobs and families
This isn't about whims of tech giants - more about whims of the market.
If the pitchfork-waving masses on HN screaming about Revolv had all actually, well, bought a Revolv, I suspect the company wouldn't have gone bust. The fact of the matter is - the market (or we) spoke - we didn't like Revolv, and that was the reason they failed in the marketplace.
I don't think Nest made any secret of it - as soon as they bought out Revolv, they announced it quite publicly on their blog - we are stopping all sales of this product, immediately - but we will continue to support it for some time.
This was no deep conspiracy - it was, well, the product's a wash, we're buying out the company, and keeping the team.
Think about it - they probably still had stock of the product lying around at the time - they would rather just destroy those than sell them - what does that tell you about the product?
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/24/7061557/nest-acquires-rev.... http://www.cepro.com/article/theories_on_home_automation_hub....
There were heaps of pundits at the time who speculated on why Revolv failed.
I think that's a far more worthy topic of discussion (i.e lessons learned on why it didn't gain traction), than going on about why we're not supporting a failed product from 2 years ago.
However, I do think that there's a valid discussion to be had over the fate of a device that's integrated to the point a "home automation hub" is. The normal expectation is that these devices continue to work for the life of the device, not when some company throws a switch somewhere.
The problem here is that there's no alternative. No graceful degradation. If Ecobee dies tomorrow, I still have a working thermostat.
This? None. Your device is now literally and figuratively worthless, the money you spent on it literally wasted. Were I a purchaser of one of these things, I'd be feeling damn scandalized, ripped off, and rightly so.
This isn't a unique problem just to Revolv, or home automation.
What happens when any company that provides a SaaS or cloud service goes bust?
Say you host your app on AWS, or DigitalOcean - if the company shuts down, will you claim that it's not "fair" for them to shutdown on you, and they must keep your application running?
Tech companies shut down all the time - sure, it sucks both for the people that work at that company, and for their customers (but I suspect more for the employees - you may have just lost some expensive tech toy - they've potentially lost their livelihoods.)
Let's take a step back, and look objectively at the facts - there was a small hardware startup, that created a cloud-based home automation product.
A few thousand people probably bought it - not enough to keep the company going. They were acqui-hired, all remaining stock destroyed, but the company that acquired the team decided to keep the servers up for a couple more years. After that, they announced they were pulling the plug.
Sure, it sucks - but they bought a cloud-managed product from a new hardware startup. I don't think any of these people were stupid - they knew exactly what they were buying.
If they didn't want to have this risk, then they would have bought from either 1. a larger company that was less likely to go bust or 2. a non-cloud managed product.
However, many of the advantages of the product are probably from it being cloud-managed. I see no issue with buying a cloud-managed device, as long as you know what you're getting into.
And look - let's be honest - home automation - I don't exactly want to be opening up my home network to the world, just so I can access it from my phone. Having a hosted service to do this is pretty cool.
Likewise, I don't have the compute power to do any cool ML at home - but if it was all done on the cloud, and there was a company behind it with the infrastructure and engineering effort, that's a good thing.
I have two Dropcams - they're pretty cool devices. Very easy to setup - but cloud managed. This is tradeoff I knew when I bought them. If the company disappeared, I understand my cameras would fail to work.
I would be upset - but I don't think it would be "unfair". I'd just hope that the people who worked at the company were doing alright.
Why am I reminded of a scene from Airplane! here?
The average person probably doesn't even know what "the cloud" is beyond the name of a product or two. They know that they can push a button their phone and turn the lights off.
You imply a level of knowing and care that most people do not have, and so one that is not realistic, or reasonable to expect.
Isn't that what we as consumers want?
They'd have no chance of ever recouping their investment, or gaining any kind of critical mass.
An acquirhire was probaby a good thing, at that stage - the founders/employees get a new job, and the customer base get an extension on the shutdown, at least for a couple years.