[gergles]

> I’m a Works with Nest developer. Will I be able to access and control Nest devices moving forward?

> 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.

[dotBen]

Yup, they just did a Twitter.

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.

[TeMPOraL]

Here's a note, straight from quotes file, I took around the original Twitter fiasco, and have since reposted or mentioned on HN a few times on occasions similar to this:

* 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.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530

[ajlburke]

Between this and the infamous hacker group called "The Shadow Brokers" I think it's time someone did a study on the influence of Mass Effect on tech culture.

Not me, though - I'm in the middle of some calibrations right now.

[Teledhil]

Damn you, EA, I liked Mass Effect 1 so much.

[gambiting]

Yeah it's a shame they never made any more after the third one.

[zimablue]

[Spoiler alert, Hyperion series] That sounds totally lifted from the Hyperion series, but maybe the idea is earlier than that, does anyone have a proposed source for that idea that's earlier than 1989?

[wombatpm]

Dune (which was based on the concept of a hydraulic empire)

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune

[djsumdog]

The writers were big Sci-Fi fans. The Asari were heavily influenced by the Minbari of Babylon 5. There are lots of other callouts to classic Sci-Fi in the series.

[asark]

The bones of the setting and plot, the tone, plus lots of details, are so heavily borrowed from B5 that it's practically a kind of remix.

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.

[j03m1]

That ending tho. Unforgivable.

[XaoDaoCaoCao]

I will always be mad about the ME3 ending. If reincarnation is something that happens, my reincarnated self will be mad about the ME3 ending from birth.

What a godamn waste.

[shrimp_emoji]

The Reapers definitely fill a similar role as the Hegemony's TechnoCore, but the idea is so general: bigger, smarter entities leverage their natural advantage over smoller, dumber ones (who are sympathetic and protagonistic and somehow win love powers the universe shh it's ok).

[ZeikJT]

Slightly different if you play renegade :)

[cpeterso]

[light spoilers]

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.

[afterburner]

> but it's a lesson people have to learn and relearn repeatedly

Money now (gambling investors?), worry later.

[_jal]

If you build on someone else's platform, the best case is you get to be a sharecropper and can make money as long as you don't make so much that your platform-betters get jealous.

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.

[krisgenre]

One way or the other aren't most of us building for someone else's platform anyway?. Mobile, desktop, browser...

[sokoloff]

You can build alongside someone else's long-term demonstrated strategy (developing Microsoft desktop software) much more securely than developing a feature in someone else's closed garden.

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.

[loudmax]

Developing Microsoft desktop software you're still building on someone else's platform and hoping they don't decide to alter the terms of the deal. Microsoft may be more forward thinking than Google, but companies change.

[sokoloff]

Absolutely. That risk is much lower than developing for the Alexa, Nest, Twitter, etc platforms. At some point, you’re forced to build on someone else’s platform(s), even if that platform is “Intel” or “AWS” as no one is doing the entire end-to-end value chain.

[lbatx]

Agreed. What's funny is that people now think Microsoft is this warm and fuzzy thing. They used to be far worse than they are today. For example, Microsoft Excel is nothing less than Microsoft's successful attempt to destroy Lotus 1-2-3. If the owner of the platform thinks you're getting too big for your britches, you can bet they'll try to take your revenue.

[johannes1234321]

A difference is that Microsoft (currently) can't render your install base useless. If Microsoft drops Windows (or core Windows APIs) your existing users can stil use your software. With Google or Twitter shutting down "cloud"/web APIs all is gone.

[mcguire]

People seem to have forgotten that Microsoft's unofficial motto is "Where do we want you to go today?" They've made an empire out of cutting off competition by changing their ecosystem.

[GoblinSlayer]

Microsoft is all about cloud and web now. Clients are supposed to be web browser (asp.net) or mobile (xamarin), and they plan to add java, objc and swift interop to better target android and ios.

[Retric]

Websites should not be tied to a specific browser. But, if you mean plugins’s then sure that’s a huge risk.

Mobile and desktop both have more risks than the web, but they also have vastly more dependency on their ecosystems.

[ElFitz]

One could say that while some have a platform strategy, others merely have an aggregator strategy

https://stratechery.com/2018/techs-two-philosophies/

[mbesto]

Which is why we have organizations that fight hard to try to keep those as open as possible.

[pm90]

> If you build on someone else's platform,

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.

[TeMPOraL]

Platform is nothing but a sales&marketing word. It means whatever the owner wants it to.

[mcny]

Google positions angular as a platform.

[feanaro]

It is possible. We just have to prioritize open standards much more than we have been doing in the last decade.

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.

[jfoster]

It's worse than Twitter. Twitter made a strategic decision (correct or not) that applied across their entire business. Google are making this decision and calculating or hoping that it's in isolation from the rest of their business. That really doesn't seem to be the case.

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.

[Balgair]

Per many comments left on HN, the people that this does benefit are the PMs. It seems that a well-worn path to promotion at google is to launch products. Hence, the reason we have umpteen chat apps. Once the promotion occurs, it seems, the product is all but forgotten, having served it's purpose: a raise.

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.

[telchar]

I've already held that opinion of Google products for some time after seeing what a ghost town Sites and Docs are, and the shutdowns of Reader, G+, Wave, etc. At best it seems that you can count on a product silently losing support for years as a hint that you should migrate.

[zmmmmm]

Well, the good news is that Google is kind of outing itself as a true outlier in that space. They clearly do not care at all about hurting developers that build on their platforms and there is enough daylight between them and other large tech companies on this that you probably don't need to extrapolate from Google to the entire tech world.

Makes me sad to say it as someone who has often defended Google in the past, but I can't on this.

[oldjokes]

Google and Amazon are ruthlessly strangling tech startups and smaller mom & pop shops that latch on to something and see a big spike in sales. They have all the data on these companies already, and people are just waiting to jump in and takeover or destroy a company completely regardless of industry or location. They just borg cube consume any success and very few people make any money in this process. This is happening every day, multiple times per day.

That's a way bigger problem than relying on an API or building some app in garden.

[shostack]

Do you have sources to cite on this?

[busymom0]

Reminds me of this:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...

[itsaidpens]

No one should have expected Google to maintain focus on anything.

[Gibbon1]

Microsoft: embrace extend extinguish

Google: Hold my Kombucha!

[Gibbon1]

> Yup, they just did a Twitter.

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.

[cortesoft]

I would worry about ANY company that is completely reliant on any other one company. You should never get in that situation.

[Zenst]

Reading thru it, it is not as brutal as it sounds, more that the they merged it into the Google Assistant API, removing direct access permission to the NEST device (remember microphone-gate with NEST) and consolidating those permissions into Assistant.

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.

[Klathmon]

I've posted here a few times, but from what I can see at this point, these things (which I use on a daily basis and are the major reasons why I went with Nest):

* 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.

[thinkling]

> Can't [do stuff anymore] (without asking a google home device directly)

So what we need is a small piece of text-to-speech hardware that will speak commands to your Google Assistant device.

[Klathmon]

I've actually already thought about that a bit! Apparently there's a hacker still inside me with a penchant for self-torture that really wants to see how far I can take that interface!

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.

[cwyers]

I am pretty sure that the main use case of Works With Nest is to tell the thermostat to go up and down. I don't believe you can do that with Works With Google Assistant.

[telltruth]

At Google, no one wants to work on existing things. You must create new product/feature to get promoted. Then you move on and thing gets shutdown. This is direct consequences of their internal incentive structure.

[FerretFred]

The big problem here is that there are a lot of people that have spent a lot of money in buying quality hardware that isn't just for leisure, it's for protection. I'll cite my 4 Nest Protects and an outdoor camera as an example. If somehow they get "sunsetted" due to some Google whim, fad or Because They Can, then I'm going to be pretty p*ssed to say the least. Based on past experience I don't trust Google to act in the users interest.

[jandrese]

It's especially annoying when you bought a product specifically because it wasn't a Google product and you had confidence that the developers would leave the devices fully functional for its lifetime, then the company gets bought out by Google and the APIs get shut down or sucked into some goddamn cloud service nonsense.

[ppeetteerr]

Google is notorious for abandoning past projects. They are of the "try everything and fail fast" variety, and I wouldn't trust my money with their hardware. Not even software, except for Docs and Gmail.

[ascagnel_]

This is why I feel like Stadia is doomed to failure from the start. It took Microsoft failing for an entire generation, even when they brought some new technology to the table, to start seeing real mindshare in the video game industry.

I don't see Google running a service at a loss for half a decade.

[takeda]

News flash, it will.

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.

[MrBuddyCasino]

I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost.

[dragonwriter]

> I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost.

PowerShell still relies on conhost.

Do you mean PowerShell ISE instead of plain PowerShell or do you mean cmd.exe instead of conhost?

[MrBuddyCasino]

You're right, cmd.exe not conhost.

[nikbackm]

It's not really possible to substantially improve either conhost or cmd due to backwards compatibility considerations.

The risk of breaking something for someone is just too high.

[giancarlostoro]

And some people dont realize the amount of work Microsoft puts into backwards compatibility. Just look at articles describing the leaked Windows source they describe Microsoft putting in code to path third party Windows software to make sure it still works.

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.

[rndgermandude]

They just announced Windows Terminal and even spent time and money on a marketing video for this yet unreleased product:

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.

[joshmccormack]

“I’m a Works with Nest developer.” Not anymore you’re not.

[reustle]

Sounds like the perfect time to transition to a "`Works with Nest` to `Works with Google Assistant` Conversion Consultant"

[gerbilly]

Reminds me of this article by Courtney Love comparing the music industry to sharecropping: https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

[otakucode]

I'm waiting for the day when Google decides to raise/lower the temperature of millions of homes by 1 degree to brag about how much energy they've saved.

[kristianc]

> Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight.

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.

[Klathmon]

From what I can see so far, there isn't any way to replicate 90% of the functionality through the assistant APIs, and even their FAQ and messaging seems to be reinforcing that they won't be adding it.

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.

[throwaway55554]

But isn't this the risk you take when you build on anyone else's platform?

[netsec_burn]

Isn't this anti-competitive with Amazon?