Google stops selling Nest Secure, still offers support | Hacker News Reader

Google stops selling Nest Secure, still offers support

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47 pointsbricestacey75 comments

I wonder, how many people consider Google products for something and go with another provider because you can't count on the product to exist long term?

I wonder this as well but outside the HN community. I don’t think many folks I know still attribute Google with the flakiness that this community does.

For the day to day user products I can see that not impacting sales much. But is their unwillingness to commit hurting GCP adoption? The people who would participate in adopting GCP (except in corporate environments) are people who might also frequent here.

GCP is different though. Much better SLA.

It is almost like saying you can't trust computers in medical field because consumer windows 95 machines crash.

Disclosure: Work at Google.

Steve Yegge, a former Googler & GCP Customer begs to differ. From my experience GCP does deprecate a lot of libraries, SDKs, and APIs. None of which are covered in the SLA policy.

https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-depre...

Yeah no. I know of several cases where people have not even considered GCP as an option because of both Google's and GCP's support reputation.

Google has squandered their goodwill with the community the last 10 years, and it's always the current/former Googler's who can't seem to see it.

You might want to work somewhere else so you hear some differing opinions, pretty much nobody I know wants to implement on top of google products including GCP because of the perceived churn.

FWIW, before I worked at Google, we selected GCP over AWS/Azure. Was very happy with the result.

What were you using it for? I'll be upfront in saying that my experience with GCP was awful, but I can appreciate that others found it useful and would be curious to learn more.

I'm a Cloud Developer / Sysadmin and I've heard some bad stuff regarding GCP's support from my peers. Not considering it anytime soon.

That's because they haven't quite done this to any of their big consumer products or their core features.

Anecdotally I know some people who express irritation at the rotating plethora of messaging apps. I also know some mildly inconvenienced by the whole Google Play Music/Youtube Music nonsense, although I never got the impression that GPM was a market leader in the streaming space.

Yeah, but it matters disproportionately to early adopters. If a brand becomes toxic with early adopters it never gets in front of anyone else. Except through acquisition, I suppose.

Cloud compute is an even starker example: Google lost the second-mover cloud space to Microsoft and they lost it because the relevant decision-makers knew Google's reputation.

Microsoft beat Google to second in cloud because it already had a strangle hold on a sizable portion of the enterprise computing market, not because executives at important companies (large enterprises) knew Google has a reputation for killing obscure consumer products. Microsoft already had relationships with many large and medium businesses/organizations, often spanning multiple decades, a business software ecosystem, and an army of salespeople, account managers, and support people, making the transition to cloud a natural next step.

Google, on the other hand, has had to build these relationships from scratch with it’s only advantage being advanced software and infrastructure which reduce costs.

Disclaimer: I work at Google opinions are my own

AWS doesn't have cheap Windows licenses, MSSQL, Office, and Active Directory. They're still beating Azure. Because they were first, of course -- but the point is that true competition is all about playing to your advantages and mitigating your disadvantages. Google had enormous advantages and squandered them. Maybe Microsoft's advantages were genuinely stronger, but from where I'm standing it looks like Google didn't even try.

I've seen the AWS vs Azure vs GCP drama play out a few times, once on a team with significant Microsoft legacy and twice without. In my judgement, the MS legacy, even at its most potent, was a smaller consideration than Google's unmitigated weakness, every manager's worst nightmare: the concrete risk that Google would cancel something and the manager would get blamed for not seeing it coming. Maybe I've just been blessed to work at non-dysfunctional companies where non-technical management asks the opinion of technical management on technical matters, but technical management is highly cognizant of this risk and has been for a decade.

My recommendation would have been to go on offense. Make AWS's constant over-promising and under-delivering a meme. Make Microsoft's we-have-altered-the-deal-pray-we-dont-alter-it-further enterprise pricing a meme (compare to: google and gmail are still free). Build counterveiling fears in that technical manager's mind, no lying required, because Amazon and MS earned those criticisms and they earned them hard.

Now it's probably too late. Too bad. So it goes.

>Google has a reputation for killing obscure consumer products

It has a reputation for killing cloud products like classic VPNs in GCP too, a significant part of our cloud infrastructure. Distrust is earned in this case.

I’d be interested in hearing your argument for that being the reason why Azure is beating GCP in marketshare. The conventional wisdom that Azure can do Windows for cheaper than everybody else and has an easier time getting enterprise customers they already have a relationship with onboard always made sense to me.

The second mover was Azure, which launched two years before GCP (Compute Engine) did.

App Engine did launch earlier, but that was not a general purpose AWS competitor.

I would suggest the "community" of developers not trusting Google long term with anything is a major reason Stadia has been basically DOA.

It's a big gamble to port a game to Stadia, and risk customers being mad at you, when Google inevitably pulls the plug

I just don't see the value in Stadia over buying a console. The only use case seems to be for someone too poor to afford a console, but that someone has enough money to buy a full price video game on Stadia.

People who want to game on their phones on the bus, in the car, waiting in line at the pharmacy etc.

people who aren’t serious enough to buy a gaming PC or a console but still want to play a games occasionally.

People who want to keep their lives simpler by converging to fewer devices

I am sure there are many more

The kinds of games they're pushing don't match up with those use-cases though.

Doesn't matter how flashy Stadia is, you're hardly going to get past the loading screen on AC Odessey/whatever before you run out of time.

Save $X00? I'm an occasional gamer, so it's a bit hard to justify a console, but for the 1-2 games per year I want to play Stadia is great.

Put another way: if Stadia has the games you want (big if now, but improving over time) why shell out for a console?

Well, if you want to play video games in your living room and you don't want your computer to be in there, a console is very convenient.

Stadia would like you to play from a Chromecast to your TV in that situation.

Particularly when Google are requiring you to port to a completely different stack to the one basically all games are written.

Wow, I didn't realize that Stadia games are running on Debian and Vulcan. https://stadia.dev/about/ That is a hard sell that you have to (likely) port your game to a completely different OS and graphics API for a presumably small customer base.

There's a large number of games that use premade engines (eg. Unity, Unreal). As long as the engine supports Linux and Vulkan (I believe both Unity and Unreal do), there's no real issue in supporting that platform.

I bought a nest secure system for my parents home since the system was more advanced then ADT and we already had the nest thermostat. I didn’t think Google would stop their support for the system since it was a hardware product and believed they were aiming for a HomeKit ecosystem. Hindsight, I was very wrong and I am now extremely disappointed. There is an obvious amount of opportunity here but I guess with all the monopoly talk, this doesn’t fit their product value and growth strategy. You can’t count on google for expensive consumer products that do not fit within their core search product or have some affiliation to keeping you retained to their core search product.

They already killed one home automation system, Revolv, which was bought by Nest and then shut down. Bummer for the suckers who bought a $300 lifetime subscription. But yeah, I would have figured something they created under their own Google branding would have lasted longer.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/4/11362928/google-nest-revol...

Can’t Believe Google didn’t refund the $300.

Plot-twist. They did.

It looks like they didn't originally plan to, but after the negative press and maybe involvement of the FTC, they did offer refunds:

http://www.theendofownership.com/blog/2016/7/14/ftcs-revolv-...

To clarify, the $300 wasn't a lifetime subscription fee, that was the whole price of the device which was sold with "lifetime subscription" as a major selling point compared to competitors with monthly fees.

Another similar story, Wink hubs were sold as not needing a subscription, and then added one later. Announced with 1 week warning, date was pushed back, but went into effect earlier this year. If you don't subscribe, it mostly stops working.

I can't imagine buying a non-subscription smarthome device unless they can be managed locally with Home Assistant or similar.

At least when you buy a device advertised with a subscription you know they have a business model. Except for certain companies where that business model is "We love to discontinue all of our projects."

I’ve had a Wink hub since the firmware was pre v1.0 (about 7 years) and not only is it still physically working, Wink has maintained support for it. I’ve got another, newer hub, and have dabbled with some of their other hardware over the years.

The subscription announcement did seem very rushed, and oddly toned- kind of felt like “this is our last option and we’re probably going under without it”.

Here’s the thing, I believe they should’ve been charging it all along. Backend infrastructure isn’t free and hardware doesn’t usually have amazing margins (though maybe consumer IoT is better than some areas).

There’s a difference between Google and Wink though, Wink actually offers product support AND they’ve continued to upgrade their offering through the years instead of killing it off every 9-18 months.

Maybe Wink has changed (it’s been a long time since I interacted with anyone) but there was a time early on where I was on the phone with product support (who arranged for and called ME vs a 1-800 hold) with a pot (as in cooking) over my Wink Hub in the front yard with an extension cord trying to complete a firmware upgrade that had a very particular bug.

Later on, I was given an API key to create my own integration, just by asking for one.

I had gone years with them and all the money they ever had gotten from me was the $49-$99 (can’t recall) for the first Hub I purchased and all they did was continue offering a reliable service quietly.

I don’t ever recall them touting “forever free”, but I’m sure they mentioned no subscription somewhere in their advertising over the years.

Google refunded the devices for 2 years after they shut it down.

Also Revolv was more of an acquihire, they shut it down almost immediately after they acquired it in 2016. You could say that Revolv failed. If google didn't purchase it they might have closed anyway with no refunds plus a bunch of people unemployed.

It sucks that it happened but I don't think your comment qualifies well what really transpired.

Well, I do, and I just advice the same to everyone that asks. I'm not very influential because I'm not a dev, but I do have business clients and I get asked sometimes.

I'm not in the US though.

I pre-ordered the new (lower end) Nest thermostat and will likely also get the Pixel 4a 5G. I am a bit worried about them getting Cancellanched but oh well, life is full of adventures.

I’m still salty about Google Reader. I’ve been avoiding Google products ever since.

I’ve heard it come up in an enterprise context, when there was a question about using a Google product - “they have a history of killing products, so let’s pick an alternate if possible”. This was a couple of years back, don’t remember what (could have been Google Glass).

Certainly the Google messenger saga vs iMessage was something that helped tip me to iOS when they killed Messenger.

I have refused to sign up for Google Stadia for this reason. They want me to pay for games. But what happens when the service gets shut down?

Not only that, Google has a reputation on spying on users. Why would you want any more Google devices in your home that are always on and always reporting to the mother-ship? Especially ones with cameras, microphones etc.

I was tempted to buy a Chromecast Ultra because my Roku does not support Peacock app.

BUT I stopped short of buying it because I have Google home mini which never seems to be able to register my preferred temperature unit (Celcius) regardless of how many times I have tried on its not-so-intuitive home app (plus can no longer connect to its Bluetooth for playing YouTube videos for example). That and reading a bunch of news/comments like this thread helps me make a fairly quick decision to not purchase Chromecast.

I sincerely hope Google CEO or someone who really cares about their org's reputation see people complaining about their product strategy. They should learn how to keep what's working and most importantly, to not venture into anything unless they can commit to it for at least 10 years. Of course, they have their cash cow, which is the advertising/search unit, so maybe they'll never care.

Peacock has been available on Roku devices for the last month.

I own a Nest Secure and actually really really love it. It syncs with my Nest + Yale door locks, so when I keypad into my house, it auto-disarms, which is amazing. I don't carry keys with me anymore, and the lock is gorgeous.

It's also just _really_ nice. They put a lot of thoughtfulness into the Nest Detect motion/door open sensor. They filter out my dogs near perfectly. The voice warnings are great and useful. The keypad is nice. And it's integrated into the Nest app so I have a one-stop shop.

Google just invested $400M into ADT... so I have to believe these things are related. They also committed to re-manufacturing Nest Detects, so they're not _completely_ sunsetting this. I wonder if they have another version of this, or an ADT-linked version that just got delayed by pandemic, but they sold through their stock and decided to do this in the interim, but I feel like it's weird they wouldn't just announce that.

It's worth noting that the monitoring service for Nest Secure is NOT ADT, it's Brinks/Moni. So I wonder if that's a big part of their reasoning. They've put their money behind a direct competitor essentially, so maybe they don't want to feed money away from their new investment.

I'm more worried about the clear writing on the wall to spin down the Nest app. The Google Home duplicated work is simply no where near parity yet, and I fear it won't be for quite some time. When they eventually tell us they're sunsetting the Nest app (in a year or two, if I had to guess, maybe sooner?), I really hope they'll have the scrubber timeline view and maintain the auto-lock and such.

As someone who's bought fully into the Google Home/Nest ecosystem, but is also keenly aware of Google's penchant for Old Yellering the hell out of things... this doesn't really surprise me. But I hope they support it for a long time to come. It's a really nice system.

Brinks is owned by ADT.

We said no to an ADT system since it was expensive and required two year contract and favored Nest secure instead, so this is disappointing.

It seems like Ring is in it to win it unlike Nest for some reason.

> Brinks is owned by ADT.

No, they aren't. They were acquired by Moni, a separate company.

Fascinating. Original Brinks Home Security -> Broadview -> ADT. New one Moxi -> Brinks. https://www.securitysales.com/business/moni-ceo-brinks-brand...

Is this another "Classic Google" move? I was considering a Nest security system a few years ago, and wasn't sure whether it was a plus or a minus that they're part of Google. I guess now it's shown to be a minus. It's nice that they're offering support, but buying Nest Secure means you're buying into the ecosystem and this is a big proclamation that the ecosystem is not growing.

Me too, re. Nest Secure - it seemed like a perfect no-contract product for managing security. It is a bizarre move given their investment/buyout (not sure) of ADP. Here's hoping Google's new year's resolution for 2021 is 'Reincarnation' and they start by bringing back all of the products they've killed, one by one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_%28John_Lennon_song%29 .)

That's not going to change until they change their internal incentives from "make something shiny and get promoted" to "keep our customers happy and get promoted."

Exactly this. I bought the Nest Secure system a few years ago because I already had Nest thermostats and cameras, so security made sense and everything integrated well.

But now I really regret it. I have a 3 year deal w/ Google's partner for Nest Secure, and I wouldn't be surprised once those 3 years are up that they'll sunset the device completely.

So disappointed in Google.

Graveyard already updated: https://killedbygoogle.com/

"Want to know when Stadia dies?"

ahaha I have never been amused by a bounce exit intent before

I was a chump and invested in quite an expensive Nest Secure installation. I have actually really liked it so far, however this has shaken my confidence in trusting Google long-term with anything let alone a product they're not selling any longer. Any recommendations on an eventual replacement?

Ring

I'm on the same boat. I think the best alternative is Simplisafe and I regret not buying it over Nest Secure. I really liked the motion + door sensor for the Nest Secure and it's what originally won me over. Totally forgot to account for Google dropping products so quickly. I personally do not trust any Ring products, especially after the whole sharing data with Law Enforcement for "Neighborhood safety"

> We are committed to bringing our users the same feature and software support they’ve always had with Nest Secure, including existing cross-product integrations within the Nest ecosystem. We will also continue to deliver critical security updates and software fixes. Nest Secure owners shouldn’t notice any difference with their service.

Homeasisstant + sensors or for simpler setup, smartthings + sensors. Works wonders.

Wow. A short while ago I was evaluating home security systems and narrowed it to two. One of those was Nest.

I feel lucky today. I picked the other provider.

I wish the USA had laws mandating the usability of IoT hardware like this. Something like “right to repair,” but perhaps more aggressive.

They should just have to buy back the hardware if they don’t support it anymore, for some reasonable time frame of support (10 years?)

Iris by Lowes did that.

I was impressed by how aggressively pro-consumer they were with that shutdown. To the point I would trust them more than other orgs with similar products

It would be good if a certification organization or insurance company would validate IoT hardware, saying "this will be supported with these features at this price point for at least N years, or will refund you the original purchase price of the hardware." The certification organization would bear the liability for this, so they would make sure they had watertight contracts with the manufacturers, and would collect risk premiums or collateral in case the manufacturer went insolvent.

I assume that it's related to Google's recent investment in ADT. ADT likely doesn't want Google competing directly with them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-adt-stake-idUSKBN2...

Damn. I just moved into a new place, and I was looking at getting the Nest Secure, as the ADT systems seem to archaic to me.

Does anyone know of any comparable, high-tech systems?

Ring and SimpliSafe are two other options that offer similar services and hardware.

Launched 2017 for a measly $499

What is Nest Secure? Is this what people call the "Nest" or some subsystem of it?

Wow, why is a question downvoted? Sorry, I really don't know if Nest Secure is what everyone calls Nest or not.

Instead of downvoting a simple yes or no would have been more helpful for me. I still don't know the answer by the way, but as far as I can tell from reading up its the same. In case anyone else is wondering also.

True it might be hard to find info on it now. Here’s a product page via Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20200109071602/https://store.goo...

Go with a vendor that's serious about comprehensive security.[1][2] Google/Nest just imports the hardware from China anyway. Cut out the middleman and buy direct.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/PhilteqHikvision/videos/35218484261...

[2] https://youtu.be/-gAUW5tW4eQ

Ubiquiti also has a great set of security products.

Really?

I'm not seeing anything beyond cameras and a doorbell. No panel, door sensors, window sensors, motion detectors, etc.

[edit] Only available through a reseller [1]

https://www.ui.com/mfi/mport/

Really, Hikvision is serious about security now?

It's kind of a joke. They're in the Big Brother business, but, unlike Google, they admit it.

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