Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API
nest.com
nest.com
> No. The Actions on Google Smart Home platform does not provide open API access to Nest devices, so it cannot be used to access and control Nest devices. Instead, managing and controlling Google Home, Nest, and thousands of third-party smart home devices is done through the Google Home app and the Google Assistant.
Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight.
I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large ecosystem where there isn't an alignment of clear economic interest.
Google of all people doing this just made it tougher for everyone else to maintain confidence in large vendor platforms.
Google: Hold my Kombucha!
You misspelled Sauron.
One app to rule them all, One app to find them, One app to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Makes me sad to say it as someone who has often defended Google in the past, but I can't on this.
The more typical case is this, where you get to spend your time and money doing real-world R&D and discovery of what works for them, for free.
If you're going to dance with a vampire, don't be surprised when it bites you.
But isn't that the height of specialization? What does a platform mean anyways if its only used for one thing and not by others?
It it somewhat unfortunate that things like this make it abundantly clear that such a reality is not possible.
History really repeats itself in this regard. First we get ourselves in a tight situation with lots of closed platforms, which is bad for everyone. Then someone comes along, spouting a new philosophy of openness (Stallman comes to mind). The philosophy takes hold and open technology flourishes for a while.
But then a huge corporation appears, offering to contribute to this new abundant ecosystem with great new things. By now, people are too relaxed and optimistic, so they readily accept this. Yet, little by little, the corporation exploits this, seizing more and more control, until we get right back where we started.
You can also spread your footprint. As just an easy-to-discuss example, Facebook and Twitter develop for many different someone else's platforms, by supporting multiple browsers [who in turn support multiple OSs], multiple mobile platforms, etc.
Proprietary platforms lure developers to their stack by making development easy. Learning an open source is typically more difficult, but the reward is greater freedom. Believing you're forced to build on proprietary technology is a fallacy.
It's in the long term interest of any business not to rely on the goodwill of some other business. This goes for Microsoft as much as for Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.
And you will always be relying on someone else's proprietary tech - whether it's laptops or power stations or cloud infra. The trick is deciding then to outsource and when to build your own.
Mobile and desktop both have more risks than the web, but they also have vastly more dependency on their ecosystems.
* Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology:
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." Strangely, it seems to describe recent (2012/2013) situation with API of Twitter perfectly.
--
Twitter did that twice[0] already, but it's a lesson people have to learn and relearn repeatedly: this is what happens when you build a business entirely around someone else's platform.
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What a godamn waste.
Highly recommend the trilogy! Great story, amazing characters, pretty great gameplay (especially after #1), and overall an immersive journey. I wasn't bothered at all by the ending, personally.
Not complaining, though, since [heresy incoming] they seem to have said "what if we took B5's setting but tweaked it to make it better" and then did it.
"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune
In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey", the alient Monoliths influenced human evolution and later decided to terminate the human race instead.
In Fredrick Pohl's Heechee series, humans stumble upon abandoned alien technology and use it without understanding how it works.
Not me, though - I'm in the middle of some calibrations right now.
Money now (gambling investors?), worry later.
For the rest of their business' life, Google APIs will be met with skepticism about their long-term prospects. That sucks, because it doesn't seem good for anyone. Not good for Google. Not good for their customers. Not good for 3rd party developers.
The divocring of incentives at google are at fault. The PMs aren't incentivied to do what is best for google, as it conflict with what is best for the PMs' families, college funds, mortgages, and health care. Hence, they do what is best for them at the expense of google.
That's a way bigger problem than relying on an API or building some app in garden.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
PowerShell still relies on conhost.
Do you mean PowerShell ISE instead of plain PowerShell or do you mean cmd.exe instead of conhost?
The risk of breaking something for someone is just too high.
This is also why Wine struggles from version / config to version / config. They cant account for every edge case the way Microsoft does / has. Microsoft by comparison has unlimited resources while Wine is just volunteers who can only test so much software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE
Granted, conhost will stay for compatibility reasons and this is a new thing.
But it's open source: https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal . And according to the readme contains the source for conhost.exe too.
I don't see Google running a service at a loss for half a decade.
All gadgets that are internet connected will stop working sooner or later, I guess with Google it is sooner.
This and privacy concerns is the reason I'm abiding anything IoT. Why should I purchase something that I can't own.
Has it really, or does it simply mean that access is going to be through Google’s API going forward?
It doesn’t seem super clear, but I can see why Google wouldn’t want to maintain two separate APIs.
For example, you can't grab images from a camera through the assistant API, you can't get notification of a doorbell ring, you can't get notified when one of the devices detects a person.
Whilst they are killing it off, they have a transition.
However, as far as timelines go - August 2019 kill off date for the NEST API is brutal and not exactly the grace period users of connected devices/software will appreciate or in many a cases with tech designed for non-technical people - know nothing until suddenly in August find what was working yesterday is now not working.
Be interesting to get the perspective of the Assistant API for NEST interaction over the current NEST API. Any functionality that is now no-longer an option and show-stopper? Any improvements?
Still, they could of done what they did with Map's and monerterised the API. Not that there is nothing stopping them doing that with the Assistant API. Which with some businesses has become the norm.
Maybe API's need some sort of Long Term Support flavours, least be much fairer for any transitions taken down the line.
* Can't get Nest camera or Nest doorbell video or images programmatically (without asking a google home device directly). This was the main reason why I sold my Ring and bought a Nest, since Ring didn't allow real time video streaming)
* Can't programmatically set or get the nest thermostat temperature, humidity, or home/away status (again, without asking a google assistant device directly).
* I can't get notifications of status changes any more. No more API access to things like notifications when someone rings the doorbell, or a camera sees a person.
* I don't know for sure, but from what I can see this kills any and all Alexa integration.
* And similarly, unless samsung has been blessed by google specifically, SmartThings integrations will go away.
There aren't any real improvements since the Nest products were already available from the google assistant system. And while you can argue many of the new-ish features (like being able to ask the google assistant screen devices to see the camera or get notifications on google home devices for doorbell rings) are improvements since they didn't really use the previous "works with nest" APIs, it's basically trading the ability for anyone to use those APIs, to only google being able to use them and give those abilities out to specific players they allow.
So what we need is a small piece of text-to-speech hardware that will speak commands to your Google Assistant device.
Technically you can do text input in the app already, and I believe they have an SDK that allows you to send your own info to the assistant and get responses of some kind. I'm honestly not sure about that, but i'm curious to see if there is something there I can work with. (and if the pricing model of it follows other google APIs, their "free" tier is probably more than enough to handle a single user, and each hacker-oriented "user" could just setup their own project which is how we also used the nest APIs).
I can then find a set of "commands" that I can feed to the "HID" (for lack of a better term), and create an extremely unofficial API around that...
Getting video back is going to be tough, but maybe with some extreme abuse of the chromecast APIs and that same HID->API interface I can get the google assistant to "cast" the camera feed to a faked chromecast and then pull the stream from there...
But as much as I like to daydream about that kind of stuff, i'm not going to do it. I don't need my google account shut down for abuse (imo probably rightfully so in that case, i'm sure that's against all kinds of terms!), and I don't want to support this decision if they do end up going through with this and don't provide an adequate replacement. So I'll probably just sell my Nest devices like I did previously with my Ring, and find another solution that won't pull the rug out from under me.
All the rest of my IoT stuff is either open-source hardware/software, or at the least local-only with known protocol interfaces. This was the one exception I made for IoT "cloud", giving Google the benefit of the doubt. I regret deeply giving them that benefit now.
After months of waffling I gave in and got one. I also regret that decision now too. Last Nest purchase I will ever make.
I wish there were an open-source Nest firmware, or at least an open-source backend. Google doesn't need to know when I'm home.
All of the complaints you just made about nest can be attributed to apple as well
And of course, after I sold it there was the incident where a server error caused everyone's heat to stop working, so the fact that my pets didn't freeze to death that day made a big impact on me too. ;)
In a few years, it will also return a profit due to an at-purchase and annual credit that my electricity utility provides.
I have pets which don't do well above a certain temperature so I keep my wireless unit by them.
If a feature that was advertised is removed after sale, this is reason to revert the sale.
One more reason to go for a completely-in-my-lan solution.
Nest products were the one exception. Previously owned several Nest Protect units and a thermostat. Moved, and installed a Nest thermostat and some temperature sensors. Just a couple of weeks ago, finished writing a data collection script to look at the temperatures in various rooms of the house. Mostly to have some real-world personal data to play with. Was hoping to write an Alfred workflow to change the temperature from my laptop.
Now I've lost those options, and in addition, I will have to have a Google account. (That is how the notice reads, right? You don't have to convert immediately, but you will have to convert eventually?)
Almost consider it my fault. I trusted Google in this one case after losing trust in Google in many other cases. “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
Will probably start looking for alternatives. Hopefully the corporate machine is paying attention to this, and will realize that attempting to force users into your ecosystem will drive many of them to different ecosystems. But it will take time and effort to regain user trust.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
For example I'm in Denmark and we have a consumer ombudsmand were you can make complaints about violations of your rights as a consumer https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/about-us/ (it talks about marketing but I the Nest was marketed to have functionality it no longer has), in fact there may already be sort of an Ombudsmand ruling that pertains here https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/46530/2016-memorandum... which says you can return something after your normal right of return but you are liable for diminished value - so you would not get the full refund in this case but something.
Of course I think that an actual complaint on this subject would result in a memorandum that you can get your full refund.
A retailer can be busy ducking all their legal obligations and telling you that you're long past the window of refund, but mention the provisions of the Sale of Goods Act and you usually get a very different response, or a manager is called over (to authorise the inevitable refund). The Sale of Goods Act is still law (Well, parts of it), and the newer EU Consumer Rights Act is in force as well. Good job too, the Sale of Goods Act is stronger in several areas, whilst the EU gave us 2 year warranty.
There is case law where things have been judged to be within reasonable expected life, and a repair, refund or compensation ordered long after the mandatory warranty ran out.
BIG IoT is a European project to enable IoT Ecosystems. With our technologies, we enable cross- standard, cross-platform, and cross-domain IoT services and applications. We are embedded in the European IoT Platforms Initiative: https://iot-epi.eu
It would be as if they announced tomorrow that the only way to read GMail is in Chrome browser or on an Android phone.
It's exactly the same as previous shutdowns, it's just that you didn't personally care about previous shutdowns and couldn't be arsed to emphasise or learn the lesson that google can not be trusted to keep services alive.
The sharp folks are those like ocdtrekkie upthread who shed their nest immediately upon learning of the acquisition.
If you used the Gmail API https://developers.google.com/gmail/api and client that supports OAuth instead of SMTP with username/password you wouldn't really run into this problem.
Yeah it kind of sucks for hobbyists because it's not as simple as sending an SMTP email but that's more to do with the lack of good tooling than something fundamental.
It was the same when G+ was created. Asshole Executives started jamming + buttons everywhere, including search results (!). They killed + in search queries as meaning "required". Every semi-successful feature had to get G+ integration to maximize the adoption of G+.
Also, forced Youtube integration and G+ accounts being required even to rate Android apps.
We shouldn’t reward scummy behaviour like this.
The last thing will be search. At some point it’ll be curated for my own good.
To be fair, Everyone has to make a living, but be honest don’t take people for suckers of make them into suckers.
Ironically I could not find this link via DDG, but it was the first hit on Google.
Is your response satire?
I want to believe it is.
Using Google via VPN services, there are many other users. Occasionally someone's been a jerk, and Google gives you the stinkeye. But then you switch to a different server.
I added "private VM" in case OP was sharing a machine with his girlfriend. But really, it's always prudent to use VPNs from dedicated VMs. Because that compartmentalizes tracking. And using VMs also simplifies managing machine state. You can use a fresh clone for each session, for example. Or boot from a static image.
I like DDG and StartPage, for sure. But sometimes I just gotta use Google.
I think you can mark the spot where the business folk took the reins from the engineers by the date of their first TV ads.
I really wish more jurisdictions would ban billboard ads.
I’m really not sure why they felt the need to change a winning strategy...
Turns out they were just making us dependent on them, and now that they've got us, they do whatever they want. We need to make ourselves less dependent on Google. Move away from GMail, use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, OSM, federated social networks, etc. I don't have a good replacement for Android yet, as iOS is just another walled garden. Similarly, Facebook is no replacement for Google+. We need stuff to be opener, not dependent on another company. For email, you need to own your own domain, so you can easily move from one provider to another.
It might not suit your needs, but I've been happily using SailfishOS for the past four years.
Descended from MeeGo, I see. I hadn't heard from it yet, but I'll have a look.
The open source MicroG project [1] takes things a step further by acting as a drag-and-drop replacement for Google Play Services. It provides a FOSS location provider backend, allows the device passes SafetyNet checks (Snapchat/Pokemon Go/online banking), and generally makes for a seamless mobile experience.
I've been using both for ~6 months now and the only noticeable difference is GPS taking a few seconds longer to get a satellite lock. Definitely worth a shot if you're interested in de-googling your Android.
Basically it's good for anything geo or <your language> related but everything else is getting worse.
This must be the dystopian future we were warned about.
Their user base just isn't us people using their services.
My daughter wrote a letter to a clothing manufacturer about how the embroidered lettering was falling apart on a brand name shirt. They sent her a new one, for free.
That is good marketing. What Google is doing? Slowly turning their brand into the "don't trust us with anything long term" brand.
While with Google I now find myself actively worrying about how to avoid their services before they break things I depend on. I certainly will not use any new services from Google... It feels like the world has turned upside down.
Now it’s just “acquire, extinguish”
Google Doodles.
edit: by that I mean using many tools to project an image of clean smart friendliness.
Probably because it IS complete regard for the user base :/
I created my app when I had a Nest thermostat and was working from home. The thermostat would assume that no-one was at home during the day - and so turn off the heating - as I didn't walk past it often enough, so the original purpose of the app was just to detect when I was actively using my PC, and ping the thermostat not to go into "Away" mode.
It was then really rewarding to add more features and make the app available for others to use. I got some lovely feedback and sensible feature requests via email, and one user generously did a French translation of the UI. I even got a small number of $€£s in Paypal donations!
However. I no longer have a Nest thermostat (moved to Australia, where they're not available), no longer work from home, and now have a young son. So I have to admit that prioritising the time & finding the motivation to rework the app to work against a different set of APIs (if even possible) may be hard to come by.
I'm being a devils advocate, but ... if you were at Google and a person making large business decisions, why would you care about 1800 users?
Nest products are expensive, those 1800 users may equate to a few hundred thousand in revenue for Google, who may instead buy a competitor for their next purchase.
If it's 1800 individual hobbyists I get it, but if we're talking about 1800 small and medium businesses that have to find a different way to support their customer base that's a huge problem.
Are you saying those 1800 people can't be upset about the lost functionality because they don't effect Google's bottom line?
I don't understand how your comment follows from the GP
Because they're still users, and that's only for this app; there are a lot more Nest users than that. How Google treats them is a sign of how they may treat other users in the future. If Google make it a habit to screw users, users will not trust Google in the future. Losing the trust of your users is more expensive than some companies seem to realise.
It is hard to make a lasting business off that, which is why everyone wants to do subscription services.
Maybe it's because people trying to get rich quick playing the VC lottery are sucking the oxygen out for people who want to just do a honest to God, "payment in exchange for providing value" type of business.
That implies stuff like "there is one way to do it", "95+% branch coverage in unit tests", and "100,000-1M hours of automated stress testing of real hardware before shipping a new board rev."
It's just terrible, barely working, shoehorned in buggy drivers, "shipped as soon as it can appear functional" code.
You could take a microcontroller, write something simple, and have something that worked to a few 9s.
Instead, IoT vendors spend their time optimizing their data collection and monetization platforms.
"You had one job..." would be a good epitaph for the entire industry.
Not saying the OP isn't having issues, but there might be a sample bias when reading the comments.
Not all smart devices are created alike. Research your purchases.
So far the one I’ve been most happy with is IKEA Trådfri.
It costs roughly half of the comparable Phillips hue offering, but still delivers on any aspect I care about.
Works 100% locally, uses standard Zigbee (non-WiFi) networking. No cloud required.
Supports HomeKit, Alexa, google assistant, not to mention Home Assistant.
More importantly, it supports other vendor’s Zigbee devices (like Hue) and supports working with other Zigbee controllers than IKEA’s own.
Also certified non-shit by kernel-hacker Matthew Garret[1].
Nobody can shut me out of this purchase. This is actually my hardware.
Baby starts moving in bedroom, light bulb flashes in kitchen.
Sonos stopped supporting remote control, no problem, map IKEA remote controller to start/stop Sonos playback.
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/supported_devices.htm...
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/lighting/smart-lighting/
I also have two Nests. Stringify has now shut down (and was buggy/difficult to use), and IFTTT is now losing access to Nest it seems, so I guess that's a real knockback of at least several years for smarthome.
Even when it was all in theory working, the most simple thing was not actually possible - Nest shows you humidity, so when humidity is over 60%, turn on the dehumidifier (I have one upstairs, one downstairs). Such a simple task coudln't be achieved because of about individual problems, and this to me puts the date of solving it back quite a way.
Edit: They do support UPnP, but still they are wide open to attack.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/3/16083996/internet-of-shit-...
Or are you saying it's prescient because Apple saw that such capabilities were not economically viable in the long run, and so it was prescient of them to never develop the functionality in the first place?
If all the accessory vendors were to go under and Apple were to stop supporting HomeKit tomorrow, HomeKit accessories and hubs would still operate just fine and alternatives could be created. Even using Alexa or Google Nest for voice control.
From what I can tell, Homebridge implements Homekit as a device, receiving commands. But can anyone build an app or device to send commands, outside of iOS?
The fact that I can't find an Homekit control app for Android strongly indicates this is not possible.
A protocol being fully documented does not mean you can get a device you cannot control (like an Homekit lightbulb) to connect to your server instead of the manufacturer's. If requests are signed and/or encrypted, knowing the protocol won't help if you don't have the keys. See also Tivoization.
> For example, search the web for ‘homebridge alexa’
I had found it. I don't think you realize that there's no Homekit there at all.
The point of Homebridge is to translate from a Homekit-speaking control app/assistant to a non-Homekit-enabled device:
https://blog.theodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/workflow....
But when you use homebridge-alexa, you're replacing that first link with another protocol (specifically, MQTT+JSON, which is what it uses to connect to https://www.homebridge.ca/).
So you've actually removed all Homekit parts from your smart home system!
- security
- support
- safety
With those devices. Don’t get me wrong, I love AliExpress - but I’d be worried about anything running at mains voltage, especially when I’m away from home.
Google Is Turning Off the "Works with Nest" API
A: The Works!
“Well, sure, they shut down that API I don’t use — big deal; all things come to an end eventually! But, they’d NEVER do that to this API I rely on — that would be so horrible, Google just would not do it!”
I hope we all can acknowledge that this argument is on perpetually eroding ground, at the very least.
Then they came for Google+, and I did not speak out—Because almost all the people I want life updates from are on Facebook.
Then they came for Google Reader, and I did not speak out—Because I never actually heard of Reader until years after it was eliminated. Maybe Reader was actually first?
Then they came for Works with Nest, and I smugly said, "I told you so"—Because I always thought it was a bad idea to expose my thermostat to the internet.
Finally, they game for GMail—and I couldn't contact anyone who might speak out for me.
One can dream. :-)
I use InboxZero through Beeminder, and could see Beeminder being locked out.
Then its impossible for the functionality to evaporate.
Ask the xmpp/jabber folks about hangouts.
I can see them keeping it around for enterprise for a bit longer, though.
Doesn’t mean they can’t get rid of it.
Furthermore if you have an up to date sync on the day imap support ends then you have all your email and need face only changing over to a new address or if you already use a custom domain logging on and changing the email provider.
Also, unless you're using IMAP to sync the entire mailbox, you'd still lose. If your mail program only stores e.g. last 30 days of mail locally, and lets everything else live on the mailserver, then you'd only have 30 days worth of e-mails left.
The first is out of character for google and the second is totally within your control.
All your mail is for most people merely GB at most per user.
Looking back, I guess it served as a kind of instagram/facebook feed, but for the internet that I wanted to see (which would differ from time to time, sometimes i want webcomics, sometimes I want ffffound <- this is largly something social media has yet to pick up on, the ebb and flow of what our attention wants). But no social media has captured my attention like Reader did...
I use Feedly now too but I still miss my Reader band.
for example, "secure google search" was "killed" but all this means is that instead of having to type "secure.google.com" to use encryption, google made HTTPS the default...
there are lots of legitimate examples so such exaggerations seem unneccessary
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7631341?hl=en
and does not have anything more to do with "anonymous" searching
It clearly says that it provided provided users with anonymous search, which gives the impression of something like DuckDuckGo or Startpage. But that's not what's happening, and I think that's worse than your original complaint.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100524223335/http://www.google...
> Note that SSL search does not reduce the data that Google receives and logs when you search, or change the listing of these terms in your Web History
Searches performed at encrypted.google.com (not just google.com with SSL) were not available in any user-facing capacity in one's Google account. It did not store the search queries in user-facing history, and did not use those terms for future search suggestions.
I'm a big user of Play music but can see the signs a mile off that it's being pushed into closing because of YouTube music, a service is straight up worse so I'll have to look around for alternatives.
To that end, I'm not sure I see the value in framing this specifically as a Google thing. Google is maybe the most visible because of how many products it has, and how popular many of them are. But really, this sort of thing is a problem that's inherent to any IoT devices that rely on proprietary cloud services, in whole or in part.
These services typically include some language in the EULA to the effect of, "We can disable parts of this device from our end, for any reason, at any time." And agreeing to those is almost certainly precondition for using the device.
Which absolutely sucks. But it's the legal and consumer protection environment we live in right now. Pretending it isn't is -- hang the downvotes, I'm gonna double down on this -- pollyannaish. Until things change, your only real recourse as a consumer is to refuse to buy products that are sold under those sorts of terms. Which, unfortunately, does mean steering clear of IoT devices that rely on proprietary cloud services.
Safety-critical() physical infrastructure is different than internet services. Applying laws for one to the other makes no sense.
() remember when all the Nests’ batteries died at the same time one winter?
US Federal Trade Commission, https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements... (1983)
> The basic question is whether the act or practice is likely to affect the consumer's conduct or decision with regard to a product or service. If so, the practice is material ... because consumers are likely to have chosen differently but for the deception ... the Commission will find deception if there is a representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer's detriment.
I don't know if anyone at TJ Maxx even understands that these are not items they can sell, as they don't work anymore. I think they think they're just fancy watches.
They will get a fraction returned. So, they still profit.
Big companies like that need fines big enough to risk closing them down for doing stuff like this. No reason for them to care otherwise.
They either know, or have purposefully arranged things so the people who know enough aren't burdened with knowing everything. Neither is acceptable.
They could be idiots who don't know what they're doing, but then they wouldn't still be in business.
I returned cheap electronics to a UK store recently, it was very clear the entire batch didn't work, indeed it was probably why they were on offer. People will say "oh it was only a couple of quid, won't bother taking it back". Still on sale. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't reshelved the non-working ones I returned.
Edit: I want to add that this is a really easy problem to solve. Support or create an open standard for the communication between the device and the server. Allow the device to be reconfigured to communicate with other servers. Then you can shut down your service and owners can keep on going. Better yet, make it so that our device can communicate on the LAN without needing a server at all. These problems exist not because they’re some inevitable fact of life, but because these companies see more value in not fixing them.
We call it the tech industry but 90% of it is actually politics. Big money influences things the most but everyone basically looks out for their own interest, right down to programmers shilling their favourite language/framework. Thats what makes this a difficult problem.
If you as a user or third party provider integrated with this API and rely on it for functionality, you have no alternative nor recourse.
> As a Works with Nest developer and partner, you will not be able to access or control Nest devices once the Works with Nest APIs are turned off on August 31, 2019. Moving forward, our team will focus on making Works with Google Assistant the most helpful and intelligent ecosystem for the home, enabling all of the products in your users’ homes to work together. We encourage all smart home developers to visit the Actions on Google Smart Home developer site to learn how to integrate your devices or services with the Google Assistant.
Beyond this, apps can be updated to remove or decrease support for older devices, and here our focus on trying to insist on auto-updated apps to fix security problems, or on apps that are designed to receive server-side updates, causes significant problems.
At some point, for example, I'm going to have to stop using the Philips Hue app, because I have an older Hue bridge. Support for the older bridge was at some point removed from the main app (and accompanied by an advertisement for the newer bridge), and moved to a legacy one, which seems to have a significantly slower response time. Now the legacy app has popups noting that web services will no longer support older hubs, and other services will be degraded... along with advertisements for the newer hubs. I expect at some point the app will simply be intentionally broken, entirely.
Fortunately, in this case, I can just use other apps, and other systems entirely, if need be, and at least the older hardware supports entirely local APIs (unless Philips decides to push a firmware update to break them?). I'm certainly not going to replace hardware that works with new hardware that provides no benefits, and throw away the old hardware; this would make no sense.
Google, though, is unusual that most of their users are not Google customers. They are the product. So Google's relationship to most individuals is statistical, not personal. If they care about me as an individual, I have never seen the slightest sign of it.
I also think that a lot of things at Google get started and killed not on the business merits, but due to shifting internal politics. Most of my Google friends have left, so I don't have recent examples, but from what I hear Google Plus is a fine example of something launched because a powerful executive got excited. As the political winds shifted, though, it got neglected, and then eventually killed.
Another interesting example for me is Google Reader. I liked the product, but was never clear to me why they built it. They ignored it for a long time and then shot it in the head. Giving it away crushed the market for commercial RSS readers. Once they stopped, that market came back, proving that Google could have had a successful commercial product if they had bothered to run it like a real business.
So no, I don't think we expect them to continue all things indefinitely. But I would love to see a more clear logic for what they will continue to support, because from my perspective it's erratic. I would be very unlikely to build a company that depended on Google; despite having used them for 20 years, I still don't think I can predict their business strategy. In contrast, I've been using Amazon for a similar period, and I have a pretty good idea of what they'll do. I'm not worried they'll EOL the AWS services I use, for example.
Let's ban Google from working on life-saving medical devices, because they will just get bored and stop supporting the software.
So what? That's between the car buyers and Google. Why should they be disallowed?
There are also some products in there that were killed in a fashion that seemed capricious and difficult-to-explain in terms of popularity, usage and continued cost to Google - notably Reader and Code Search.
Consider it an incentive to avoid dependencies on external services.
Perhaps there's a legislative solution. Although in the UK the Consumer Rights Act has no time-limit, so in theory of your thermostat stops working because the company decided to pull the plug then you can get refunded, at least.
I'd like to see something like a requirement to publish interoperability details, or code that runs on a major OS that operates as a server, to facilitate long term user-led support, too.
The requirement to publish interoperabilty-details/code/etc. is something I see as far more burdensome, perhaps in some cases to the point of being impractical, which is sad because I actually value these properties quite highly. I don't own any products that rely on the API of a specific company to continue functioning, and as an individual consumer I reward companies that do release such details (albeit in a statistically insignificant way). The simple, obvious reason that this is burdensome is because the release of code helps competitors, and requiring a company to help competitors makes it more likely that they will decide to invest in some less-regulated industry instead. There's a logical reason that most software companies aren't open-sourcing their products, unfortunately. Also, and I disagree with this yet don't want to force my opinions of the world on other peoples' infosec decisions, some people argue that closed source software is more secure than open source software due to security through obscurity. More rarely, I can imagine edge-case IoT devices that rely on highly specific infrastructure where interoperability just isn't reasonable, and the question of which layer interoperability should be provided on is non-obvious. Imagine if SpaceX launched a swarm of satellites measuring some data about the Martian atmosphere and released a product that could tell you the measurements when asked. Do they need to provide the details of the API between the product and the Earth-based relay? Do they need to provide the details of the connection between the Earth-based relay and the Martian satellite swarm? Do they need to provide the details of the internals of the satellites themselves? What if they're the only company anywhere near being able to supply this service, and the technology will almost certainly be obsolete by the time another company manages to launch a Martian satellite swarm? I feel like this probably isn't the best example, but there might be better examples I'm too dumb to think of at the moment, and not at least considering those known-unknown potential scenarios might be harmful to society as a whole (but I think I've articulated this last point worse than the rest of my comment, and I'm not entirely convinced of it myself).
[0]Edit: on further thought, this hampering effect should only really exist if there is a minimum time from date-of-sale that the minimum EOL must extend to; if I can meet the requirements while selling a product that is only guaranteed to work until yesterday then it shouldn't have any real effect other than consumer awareness, but it also kind of takes the teeth out of the proposal.
Gotta say, most annoying thing to me was discontinuing support for the Nexus 6p after only 2 years. Made me switch to iPhone for ever.
Any solution that allows you to write stuff on the Interwebs can be misused for spam. The solution that every company is expected to come up with, of course, is a good anti-spam mechanism.
Youtube annotations were a solution offered for free. It probably didn't make any sense for Google to implement a good (and expensive) anti-spam mechanism for it. But let's call it for what it is -- a cost-cutting measure made at the expense of users, most of whom are non-paying. There's no point in bringing up technical matters, there aren't any.
I'd bet a week's paycheck that Google's list would be the shorter one.
When Google pulls the plug on Nest, they burn an entire ecosystem, and piss off the people they should be working with on IoT. It's really stupid strategy.
GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices have GE bricked simply because they were bored of supporting them? MS Windows drivers support just about every ancient crusty device MS ever made - apparently forever.
It's the web obsession with having every trivial action go through an online server - for data gathering - that breaks the consumer's implied contract with hardware devices: That they should simply work until physically beyond economic repair.
Most of those simple web API actions could function just as well on the LAN, so the device could function indefinitely - you'd just lose remote access when the Google API server shuttered. The 99% case of controlling lights or thermostat whilst in the home would still work, just no longer remotely from a hotel 1,000 miles away.
But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it.
Why do you think that is?
------
Media Center
Kinect
Zune
PlaysForSure DRM
Microsoft Money
Windows Home Server
Microsoft Kin Phone
Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia
Windows 10 Mobile
The Band
TechNet
Hotmail
Live Messenger
Live Mesh
Groove Music Pass
Groove Music for iOS
Groove Music for Android
Encarta
Windows Small Business Server
Flight Simulator
Microsoft Works
Microsoft FrontPage
Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, formerly Windows CE for Automotive, formerly Windows Automotive, formerly Windows Mobile for Automotive
If you already bought them, Microsoft Money, Encarta, Flight Sim, SBS, Works etc etc should all keep working. If you still have the CD you can probably install just fine, and keep on using them (if it's still meaningful). I'm sure plenty do just that, and perhaps some will for decades. Just no more new versions are coming. Sure MSN Messenger and other online offerings have been hard stopped.
For most of your list, no one hit what's effectively a remote kill switch, and stopped them working for everyone at the same moment. That's what killing an API does for an internet service, or hardware device dependent on that service. On such and such date $thing will cease working. Google does that all the time, hardware and software. So much that they got themselves a reputation for it.
Didn't wear out, die of old age, become obsolete, but they reached out and killed. It's qualitatively different.
The difference is probably visibility.
Microsoft have for the longest time been hiding in the cushy enterprise segment where customers pay you halt development and kill products.
Closed-off products. Perhaps not even a resonable API. Definitely not public facing.
I’m kidding about enterprise software, but it’s kind of true.
This point was about “enterprise” software in general and the fact that many a project has been abandoned and put down in this space without much fanfare.
Also, many big companies tend to pay a lot of money for software the never actually use, hence “cushy”.
They’re competitive on prices too (although it’s tough when many of your direct competitors are free). Compare MS Office with something like Maya or AutoCAD, say.
First of all I’m talking developer exposure.
Many angry devs have sat in their cubicle swearing at MS & others product teams for changes made or products dropped. These products doesn’t necessarily have the visibility of google services.
What I’m further trying to say is that it’s a culture thing.
Times are changing and with it the business model of selling standardized crap to clueless, ignorant customers.
How quick this change comes for a company is dependent mostly on the inertia of it’s customer base i guess.
Businesses are starting realize that you need to take back control of data and process to increase opportunities for innovation as well as speedy delivery.
This culture has in ways been pioneered by for example google and others selling/providing services rather than software suites.
They have constant change as an inherent property of their organization and this leaks.
This is ofc just my take on it.
(Digression regarding prices: maya and cad are business drivers. You need to compare them to SAP or possibly the bizdev stuff from MS == not cheap)
I’m coming at it mostly as a client-side developer, comparing to platforms like macOS, iOS and Android (and the web!) where things are constantly in flux, with new APIs added and old ones deprecated.
Compared to those, Windows and .NET are extremely stable; they add new APIs, sure, but old ones tend to stick around and keep working for a long time (some would argue too long).
That’s not to say I like Microsoft platforms and APIs; they tend to be badly-designed, buggy and fragmented. But in my experience at least, old MS APIs keep on working whereas old Google APIs get deprecated and shut down. It’s a very different developer experience, with different upsides and downsides.
I’ve spent far too much time in the “enterprise” spectrum of this business and arguably this is were MS for example have made the bulk of it’s fortune.
The flux you mention could for many be a “good thing” assuming you can keep pace?
All those would still work btw. You just wouldn't get updates / newer versions of them.
But if you're talking about services that rely on online servers it seems different. And these are services that no longer work once the plug is pulled.
For MS the list I can pull from memory is far shorter. In fact, i only remember Zune. I bet i missed several, but more than Google?
Let's instead just evaluate Google's behaviour as it is.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, but don't have insider knowledge on this.
It seems like Google really can't handle long term support of anything that isn't wildly successful (200+ million users), and even for those things that hit said benchmark, long term support is bumpy, inconsistent and unpredictable.
Not because it's not a valid criticism but because people seem to think they are the only person ever to make that damn joke.
Is that backed up by anyone else?
Because my app does not use the works-with-Nest API
Anything less than that means you're relying on a temporary situation whose end you don't control and can't predict.
> One set of privacy commitments. As Nest redefines technology in the home, there’s an opportunity to explain clearly and simply how our connected home devices and services work, and how we will respect your privacy. Learn more about Google’s commitment to privacy in the home.
and at least a preliminary perusal of the google home apps seems to indicate control of nest works:
https://assistant.google.com/explore/c/19/?jsmode=du&hl=en_U...
so while grumpiness about this consolidation and need to migrate / have a google account (instead of nest account) seems warranted, this doesn't feel like the same thing as "pulling a twitter" or a conspiracy to bait and switch developers.
if it turns out you won't be able to actually control the nest in the same way, I'll go get my pitchfork and join y'all, but I'm cautiously waiting to see how this turns out.
They don't shut down every service, just ones that aren't performant from a business perspective.
Which, I would think, works pretty well as a business model.
Mind you that’s the old Microsoft. The new Microsoft is totally different.
> Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.
They didn't shut down services, they'd make previous market leaders irrelevant & alternate implementations difficult to impossible (as they couldn't keep up).
Their attitude here would have been to not buy Nest but ship devices reimplementing the Works-With-Nest protocol, then add convenient / useful new features to the protocol in ways difficult for Nest to implement, and finally manage to lock it down such that Nest simply wouldn't be able to use the extensions while retaining compatibility with WwN devices themselves.
They'd kill Nest, not the WwN ecosystem.
But generally speaking I don't disagree with your assessment. It's just that media for hire was never really their strong suit and the Zune was a bit of a joke.
Where they must have suffered a world of pain is to keep old software compatible on newer Windows versions and I actually appreciate that.
Spoken like someone who never owned one. The hardware (built by Toshiba) was excellent as was the software - if you avoided the harebrained DRM scheme and loaded your own MP3s.
I got a defense however:
You may recall that this completely idiotic DRM implementation allowed to beam a DRMd song up to 3 times to other Zune users. That process was called squirting.
One /. commenter suggested that one should imagine Steve Balmer in the process of squirting.
Well, that pretty much killed it for me.
Hopefully most wp8 devices can be upgraded but I would not depend on that for long...
Still, I had this nagging feeling that I shouldn’t have bought them. Thanks for confirming my anxieties, Google! I can’t trust you, but I at least can trust you to be you.
FWIW, I've got a gas fireplace with no C wire that I added a 120V->24V AC adapter and a Fast-STAT common maker to for <$100 to wire my Ecobee thermostat without needing to alter any in-wall wiring.
What's the suggested alternate device and route for those of us that like a little control, like having other services that can integrate, and don't want to be yanked around by shutdowns?
As for automation and APIs to control it, generally we only use the Android app, but we have linked the ecobee to the Google Home app. I haven't yet tried to add it to the Mozilla webthings server running on our Retropie. We only have a 2 bedroom apartment, so our scope for lots of automation is somewhat less than if we owned our own home.
Until they are acquired by google and then rinse&repeat.
That's one way to shut out Amazon.
I knew how to do that with the Nest API (see e.g. https://github.com/peterot/nest-graph or https://github.com/nbrownus/nestflux ). These data provide some useful information about energy expenditure in the house, a little better than the Nest "schedule" view of daily heating/cooling activity and daily temperature settings.
Will this still be possible with the new indirect Google Assistant API integration they are describing? How?
Look into low power sleep modes, so that it can run for a very long time, waking up at some interval to take a quick temperature measurement, report it, then go back to sleep. While you're at it, have it confirm its battery level and report that too if the battery is low.
Customers could get $55 if they could prove* they used it, a low payout with a high burden of proof
If we decide as a society that third-party apps misusing the platform in a way that hurts the users or otherwise looks bad to the outside world is the platform's fault, even if this was done with the user's consent (which the app that harvested data for Cambridge Analytica had) and furthermore decide that such conduct deserves a disproportionate fine (which 5B is, given that much larger breaches without any consent have generally gone unpunished) because the platform as a whole is owned by a large successful company, we cannot also expect large tech companies to keep supporting open platforms that allow third-parties to thrive. The economic benefits of giving control to the user are fairly marginal and theoretical, while the risks are extremely large and potentially existential.
I'm not intimately familiar with this particular API, but it's almost certain that it can be abused by third party apps in a way that makes look Google bad. Platform openness has its advocates and detractors at every company. In light of what's going on, it would be hard for the advocates to win any argument.
This is just part of the picture and almost revisionist in its briefness.
Sure, they had "permission" from the user, which took that "personality-test" to harvest their data.
Who sure as shit did not agree to have their data harvested were the friends of those who took the test and whoms data was harvested and resold with applomb and abandon.
Leaving this part out of your statement makes this statement a lie by omission.
Marketers at nearly all large companies routinely do much worse with sensitive information. What personal information anyone cares about was used in a bad way here? Hypothetically, if there was an ad-platform that allowed you to specifically run targeted ad campaigns political opinions/leanings/etc as computed by the platform, this would not be an issue per se by the norms of the ad industry. It appears to me that what most people are upset about it has more to do: 1) how targeted advertising normally works and 2) that the political campaign of someone they don't want as president was helped by this. But targeted advertising is absolutely not illegal or anything and politicians you don't like still get to run campaigns. The actual amount of wrong-doing here is miniscule and the part that is attributable to Facebook is even smaller.
And the point is that any of this could absolutely happen with Nest. Nest does involve sensitive information and for instance, Nest cams don't have consent from every single person they happen to record either. I don't know exactly what nest API allowed apps to do but it would be hard to imagine that there's no possibility of scandal.
Google has much more integration capabilities, but they seem to be this far "invite only", you can't request it.
Edit: Finally went and read the announcement. They're really not giving people much time, are they? Nevermind, three months is pretty bad.
Also - I could sort of understand it if they provided a proper IFTTT style system in Google Home but they don't. All you can do is trigger actions based on a custom voice command or a time.
Google is a company with severe ADHD. Consumers expect home appliances to operate for decades. That is not a good mixture. If the whole "internet of things" trend dies out and people stop buying, you bet your ass Google will happily shut Nest's servers down and leave every single one of their customers out in the cold. They've already done it.
I've got friends with home automation systems from the early 80s. They work flawlessly. You think any service or device Google sells will be functioning in twenty years? Thirty?
Call me when IBM is offering a smart hub.
I was completely shocked
I haven't found a replacement for them yet, but I'm incredibly wary of investing into any ecosystem these days.
I look at a lot of products now and if I find I can't access it via python then I treat it as pre-landfill and don't even consider it worth purchasing.
All that employee stock from the acquisition must be finished vesting.
When Google bought them I knew Nest would only get worse, and here we are.
I'm SO SICK of them acting like there needs to be a firewall between google apps accounts and everything else.
I was your guinea pig so you could perfect the service for business users, now that you're done with that experiment you want to hang us all out to dry.
Pretty sure ours paid for itself within 4 months.
If you have two-story house, the remote sensor is incredible for keeping the space you're in comfortable.
https://www.hackster.io/projects/tags/thermostat
Plenty of people have worked on open source / open hardware thermostat systems. Take your anger at this and apply it to them.
From the follow up email: "Any product feature can be changed at Nests discretion under the terms terms of service. It is for this reason that I cannot refund the cost of your thermostat."
It feels like various features have been kind of frozen in place for the past few years.
It saddens me to see people buy into IoT and not think about the vendor lock-in or data exfiltration. The thing is, there really aren't any alternatives.
Don't know about either API to know if that's the case, but it's what the page implies?
This is a huge win for Amazon. Ring will get more customers and Nest will be abandoned.
in the future it will be "that $8000 trunk car driving computer is now a paperweight".
I'm not sure where you're drawing the conclusion that the Nest Hello no longer works.
Well, now it’s “Just a car”
I've been very happy in general that I switched to ecobee when I moved, and this made me even happier.
Google maintaining multiple APIs that essentially do the same thing. Google bad.
People are going to complain either way. I welcome this change personally and think it makes perfect business sense. I can't think of any Works with Nest that I have integrated in my home that's not already connected to my Google Home, so I don't really see this impacting many negatively.
Not sure how you came to the conclusion that because you can't think of any integrations you personally use that it won't affect others.
I wonder how the Actions on Google Smart Homes integration works.
Will I still be able to control my Nest thermostats from Google Smart Home Actions? This seems to be mentioned, but it's unclear what I'm able to do and how.
Does anyone have a bit of insight in that? Maybe that could give more insight in the reasoning of Google to shut it down.
They cite pervy privacy reasons, but bad luck for anyone using it as a baby monitor, through a glass window, etc.
People are upset that there is a reduction in the openness of things, which I understand. People are upset that their personal projects and home hacks will stop working, which I understand.
They should just state that though, and not the "That's it I'm never buying Nest again" type of angry response.
If you want to hack your home, there are many open source alternatives.
Or, relatedly, do you think all those labs that bought PS3's for their ability to act as Linux clusters were wrong to sue the hell out of Sony?
Nest used to be one of those alternatives, and everyone who bought into it is screwed. I did not buy into it because I figured it would happen. It does not make it any less horrible that it did happen.
The root of my question though is this: Is most API use a hobby thing, or a professional thing businesses are build around?
My assumption here is that the financial impact is trivial for them. They aren't Valve ending Half-Life modding for example. If that's not a clear analogy, Valve's enabling of modding for Half-Life enabled Counter Strike, which basically kept Valve alive so they could become what they are now.
There are lots of mostly invisible companies selling high-end automation that don't need to advertise so you'll never have heard of them. It's not just hobbyists that build this stuff.
I have eight Nest thermostats across two homes, and a pile of Nest cameras. My "hobbyist" use of the APIs collects and aggregates some of the data together since the Nest UI (web or mobile) is lousy at best. Given that Google Home / Google Assistant do not work* with my G Suite account, I'm not at all confident about continuing to use Nest equipment after the grand changeover to Google Home Assistant Whatever in August.
* By "do not work" I mean: You log in to a Google Home device with a G Suite account and it (the device) cannot be shared with any other accounts, and it cannot access any of your data like your calendar. Oddly Alexa has no difficulties accessing my G Suite calendar.
edit: yes: https://www.ecobee.com/home/developer/api/examples/index.sht...
Funny how the more assertive the name the more likely it is to be dumped
Many times more technology equals more nuisance.
Edit: actually the Nest skill seems to be provided by Nest, not Amazon. So as long as they don't remove it it should keep working.
If your model is a subscription service I don’t want your product. Especially if they are acquired by Google. Google has acquired and killed (or killed their own products) more products than almost any company I use.
I don’t even want Alexa so I just turn it off.
At a click of a finger, half the features disappear!
Time to start looking into an alternative - suggestions anyone?
I wonder if this was about money, control, or developer resources? What's the upshot for them?
Scale is fun! >.>
Primarily because, even though I have plenty of storage space for an NVR, I don't want to rely on thieves not stealing the thing if they break in, thus leaving me with no footage. It would be easy enough to constantly back the data up to a different location, I suppose, but not something I wanted to bother with.
They also integrate pretty well with the Ring alarm system, and the $10/mo I pay for monitoring alarm service for burglary and smoke/co2 detectors I have also covers the storage cost for multiple cameras, etc.
I just picked up a smart lock that will supposedly get additional integration later this year, and be able to disarm the alarm system automatically when it's unlocked. (This functionality already exists for some other smart lock options)
I am sticking with a non-IOT thermostat.
Under the FAQ, I was not able to find an entry like "Will I be able to reach a human about my Nest devices / services?". That's a bit scary. Not sure if that was possible before though. But, considering the occasional horror story of what happens when you get locked out of a Google account, I wonder what the impact will be having a Nest integrated with that.
Guess what, GSuite and GC are covered by SLAs/contracts.
But yes, this is a stupid move by Google, trying to lock out other controllers/apps. I have been looking at home automation and I want: a) open APIs b) security c) functionality
Most offers/products don't even do c) very well.
1. How many end-users are affected?
2. How many devs are affected?
3. What is the annual transaction volume that is affected?
Depending on the magnitude of the answers to these questions, I can see turning this API off being either a good thing or a bad thing. If hundreds of users are affected, well. Sad, but sometimes unpopular things get turned off. If hundreds of thousands of users are affected, this is an eyebrow-raising decision.
Developers are also important, but less so than users. It would be nice to keep the lights on just to let people tinker, but that same openness creates security risks and costs money. Many on this site praise Apple when they make restrictive decisions that harm devs, as long as those decisions are justified in terms of end-user privacy and security.
I think the transaction volume question gets at the heart of the issue, at least for me. If there is a lot of economic activity here, that's a signal that user needs might not be accounted for in this decision, or at least are not its primary driver. On the other hand, if only $1M or $2M per year is changing hands in the affected part of the ecosystem, well . . . again, nothing lasts forever.