Does it mean they'll stop working altogether?
Will they just not provide support for them but they'll keep working until the day they won't?
If it's the former, that's ridiculous and goes in the face of all the "good" they have been trying to do with the "leaf" program
We want to make you aware of some upcoming changes that will impact our earliest generation thermostats, including those at Your House. Starting October 25, 2025, Google will no longer provide support for the Nest Learning Thermostat (1st gen) launched in 2011 and Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen) launched in 2012.
You will still be able to access temperature, mode, schedules, and settings directly on the thermostat – and existing schedules should continue to work uninterrupted. However, these thermostats will no longer receive software or security updates, will not have any Nest app or Home app controls, and will end support for other connected features like Home/Away Assist. See more details at our support website."
Solves the problem permanently, no risk of future deprecations.
I just think that designing hardware to fit within another piece of dead hardware just to achieve what can be done off the shelf for $50 is not really my idea of a fun personal project.
Plenty of cheap thermostats have good aesthetics. The $30 round Honeywell analog thermostat is a timeless design. Their $30 non-programmable digital thermostat (RTH5160) is aesthetically pleasing enough, I certainly wouldn't call it ugly. I didn't interpret the stated goal of this project to be particularly relevant to aesthetics.