Google is killing software support for early Nest Thermostats | Hacker News Reader

Google is killing software support for early Nest Thermostats

theverge.com

14 pointsohmyblock14 comments

I refuse to invest in anything in the Google ecosystem at this point; any app, software, or hardware you use can clearly be discontinued at the whim of the C-suite getting pitched by some PM trying to justify why they deserve to be a team lead for Google's 8th chat or messaging app.

Do you refuse to get iPhones because older models are no longer supported? Because this is the same thing.

Apple has a long track record of extended support for older iPhone hardware while Google has a long track record of destroying any goodwill around hardware investment by consumers. OP is right, you have to be willfully ignorant at this point to buy into any Google consumer hardware ecosystem.

Better to purchase from a company that’s business is what you’re buying, not a labs project at the mercy of whomever is floating through Google upper management at the time (imho).

https://www.macworld.com/article/675021/how-long-does-apple-...

https://killedbygoogle.com/

These products were release in 2011-2013. No iPhones from those era are currently supported by Apple. These products were in fact supported much longer than Apple.

I’m demonstrating patterns. Ecobee supported its first thermostat for 16 years [1]. They do because they have to, it’s their core business (like Apple does for hardware, again, a core business), Google doesn’t, these are not core businesses. If you want to argue “Google does care and provides reasonable periods of consumer hardware device support,” I don’t believe that’s what the evidence shows.

I’m not mad at the lawnmower [2], it just is what it is. Google doesn’t care and likely never will, because of the incentive structure and culture of the org. “Does it hyper scale? Can we ignore the customers? Ship it.”

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147154/ecobee-smart-ther...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246

In the example I gave you above. Apple released the iPhone 5 in 2011, the same year as the Nest 2n gen. Does Apple support the iPhone 5 anymore? Using the company you provided, you are holding Google to a much higher standard than Apple.

I think smartphones are the one exception as a "necessary evil" at this point in the first world.

However, we are talking about a thermostat here. When I bought my house, there were 40+ year old mechanical thermostats on the wall. I swapped them out because they were ugly and not programmable. I put in "dumb" Honeywell thermostats that don't connect to the internet and don't require software updates. Possibly they'll be here in 40 years, though I wouldn't be surprised if some capacitor or something fails, maybe I'll only get 20 years out of them.

Anyway, as a long-time Google user I've just been through this cycle too many times, mostly with web and phone apps, to seriously invest in them. The convenience of having everything in one place, in Google's cloud, also needs to be weighed against the annoyance of migrating things and learning new features whenever they decide to kill something off. If Obsidian dies, I'll take my .md notes to another editor. When Google Keep dies, who knows if stuff will carry forward or break like the Notes->Keep transition did for me.

My Nest (2014) is working perfectly fine but I'm required to pay for a new model. Apparently, heating and cooling a three-bedroom home requires more advanced technology...

I am in the same boat, but apparently it will continue to work. Downside is no more remote control. Editing the schedule via the thermostat is really going to be the real pain point. Though the app/website stopped working for me 6 or more months ago anyway, only the google home app still worked for basic temperature set.

I threw my first-gen Nest thermostat in the trash about 5 years ago after one too many UI changes and at least one bricking incident (later fixed) after an unwanted update.

I replaced it with a super basic Honeywell mercury thermometer, which will almost certainly still be working 100 years from now.

Not sure why I'm surprised. I'm actually quite surprised Google didn't do this sooner, being Google and all. I bought my Nest before the acquisition and held out as long as I could before they forced me to migrate my Nest account to a Google account.

I understand not wanting to support old hardware forever, but is it really that hard to lock this device down enough to only accept commands from Google servers? I just want to be able to tweak the temperature at night without getting out of bed.

I certainly won't be replacing it with their new model, even if they are offering a reasonable discount. I hear good things about Ecobee...

I have a Sonos Play:1 speaker from 2013 still working perfectly with no plans from Sonos to change that. My Nest thermostat from same year will lose app and home/away features which I would say is over 50% of its current functionality, for a device that I bought for 250€. I wonder what Tony Fadell thinks about this.

Wait, isn't AI supposed to make something like providing software support easy and inexpensive? Does Google not fancy itself an AI company? So what possibly can be the excuse for this anti-social behaviour?

The backlash will come.

They could at least open the device and allow open source firmware (e.g. esphome)

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