> it doesn't seem right to say they somehow acted dishonestly just because they picked up the pieces of a failed company but didn't want to prop up a product which nobody wanted.
Agree with all of your comment except except this part.
Had Nest acquired the company after Revolv independently announced it would discontinue its product, then customers wouldn't have reason to be unhappy with Nest.
M&A is risky and research is important.
This case seems like a catch 22 for Nest. Acquire the assets early and inherit the legacy product burden. Don't do that, and risk losing access to the same assets. I'm sure they did their research.
What is not known at this point is the cost of keeping up the systems that enable Revolv's product. Were they more open about that, I might be more sympathetic. As it is I'm not sure what could be done to right this other than give Revolv customers a refund.
Some of us probably have a mental image of a large ec2 instance plugged into an Oracle RDS instance, nicely monitored, disaster recovery plan tested and ready, chugging away just fine. Maybe a few $10Ks per year to keep it running. Why would they piss their customers off just to save a few thousand bucks?
But in reality, maybe the back end is a teetering pile of doggy do, running on old bare metal machines in a couple of racks, backups not trusted 100%, lots of humans involved in keeping it running and answering customer support inquiries - so more like many $100Ks per year (indeed some companies would be able to spend $1Ms). In this case it would be crazy to try and keep it running, since there is no new business coming from it.
Likely the truth is somewhere in between.
Some transparency here from Nest would be a PR win.
The solution is to deploy new Nest firmware on the Revolv hardware, not axe your customer base. Then you at least get to exchange the loss of features with entree into the current Nest ecosystem. The message now is that all Alphabet supported hardware can't be trusted. Ha ha sucker. You just blew $300 on a fancy doorstop.
Yes, I can't help to compare this to what happened with Parse. They are shutting down but they released the backend as open source and customers could keep going on.
I think that companies should be more careful at offering "lifetime subscriptions" or similar stuff. You shouldn't be allowed to take back that. Can the people in their boards be sued for damages even if the company closes? I don't know about the USA but in other countries board members are personally responsible in some cases, for example frauds.
I will bring this up every time someone wants to give Joyent money. Do NOT give Joyent money. They will screw you over.
Edit:
> In an ideal world, Hub owners would be free to point their devices at a different central server, run by a third-party competitor or a trusted friend, or even run such a server on their own. They would likewise be free to collaborate on improved software that would unlock the potential of the Hub hardware or purchase such software from a competitor to Nest.
> We work to improve the law and protect your right to tinker with technology. But there's another way to push back against untrustworthy devices, and that's refusing to buy electronics and software that prioritize the manufacturer's wishes above your own. Certainly Alphabet, which owns both Nest and Google, is going to have trouble selling its hardware in the future if it doesn't provide customers some assurance that they won't be left in the cold like those who rely on the Revolv Hub.
A few years of deprecation warnings alongside a free and open source server that works as a drop in replacement for the server would mitigate much of this bad will. Alphabet cannot isolate this to just Nest.
"We appreciate and value you as one of Joyent's lifetime Shared Hosting customers. As this service is one of our earliest offerings, and has now run its course, your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012."
There are numerous ways they could have transitioned customers... open sourcing the server or providing an upgrade path to newer path to newer devices or even providing a date in the future to transition by.
The path they chose is the one with the least fore thought for their brand and customer relationship.
That's the risk you run when you acquire a company - you get their liabilities and their assets.
Nobody should shed any tears for Nest, Google or Alphabet. They bought the company and if they didn't do sufficient due diligence, then tough. They can't just abrogate their responsibilities when they don't feel like it!
Agree with all of your comment except except this part.
Had Nest acquired the company after Revolv independently announced it would discontinue its product, then customers wouldn't have reason to be unhappy with Nest.
M&A is risky and research is important.
This case seems like a catch 22 for Nest. Acquire the assets early and inherit the legacy product burden. Don't do that, and risk losing access to the same assets. I'm sure they did their research.
What is not known at this point is the cost of keeping up the systems that enable Revolv's product. Were they more open about that, I might be more sympathetic. As it is I'm not sure what could be done to right this other than give Revolv customers a refund.