What Google Really Gets Out of Buying Nest for $3.2 Billion

What is excited about the next wave of innovation is that there will be possible applications for human wellbeing that are much cheaper and more accessible.  For instance, a few medical device companies are moving into this direction.  Intel has been working to simplify deployment of the Internet of Things with its intelligent systems framework.

From Wired:

But no one who has watched Google struggle with the hardware business in recent years could really believe it would just be shelling out for thermostats and smoke detectors, no matter how smart Nest’s reinventions of those devices might be. Though Google says Nest will retain its own identity as a company, the partnership’s potential sets up some seriously great expectations of an entire world populated with Google-powered smart devices.

“Both companies believe in letting the technology do the hard work behind the scenes so that people can get on with their lives,” Nest CEO Tony Fadell told WIRED in an interview just after the deal was announced.

“Our roadmap furthered letting tech do the hard work,” he said. “(Google) said, can you do this more quickly?”

And for Google, speed is essential. The key lesson from the just-ended Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is that serious innovation in core gadget lines like smartphones and televisions is coming to an end

Instead, the excitement at the show was around wearables and the so-called internet of things. The future of hardware isn’t better versions of the same standalone tech. It’s what you can create when you take all the smarts of the smartphone and build them into everything else.

As its own early dive into wearables with Google Glass demonstrates, Google knows it can’t miss this next big leap in hardware, which would end up costing the company much more than $3 billion in lost opportunities.

Here’s what Google gets for its money:

 http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/googles-3-billion-nest-buy-finally-make-internet-things-real-us/