Technology/Strategy Research Analyst, Visionary Communicator, Futurist

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Len, I was a bit surprised by the NEST acquisition, esp for $3.2B. NEST had 2 lawsuits from Honeywell and First Alert. Not sure of current status on these. There seemed to be many more advanced and complete systems emerging in the market (e.g. Canary). Other systems/partnerships on home energy management are more established – Comcast, Verizon, Control4, etc. The NEST was a closed system until just recently and it only had one major partner -Control4. CLosed is NOT Google-like.

More complete systems- iike ISIS from Loews have been available and have a solid distribution channel. (NEST is sold by Home Depot).

NEST had no real big energy partnerships – that I’m aware of. They are nothing like an Itron.

And NEST doesn’t have a full wireless infrastructure core like Belkin, Netgear or others.

NEST is not a platform for IoT, or even M2M.

And last but not least – Google dropped its project on home energy – Powermap about 2 years ago.I

All that being said, Google has had an intense effort in minimizing its energy for computing – and is probably the most efficient data center operations from an energy perspective. NEST did have some algorithms related to smart energy management – and these may have value. NEST also recently passed the 1 million install mark in homes – a small club with only about 6 other members.

It will be interesting to watch what other pieces Google buys up – I suspect that NEST will be just a small piece of this puzzle. The buyout and price tag will also raise the profile of others in this market. And the NEST device itself may just be a Trojan horse for bigger things to come.