[remir]

So Google invested 450 million in ADT?

Pocket change for Google, but still a significant amount of money. Perhaps that is a bit too far fetched, but imagine if Google could use location tracking to know who came to your house when you weren't there. Say you got robbed on a Friday night a 10pm.

They got footage of the guy, but it's dark outside and he's waring a hoodie, but their software knows WHO was there at that time. Some device (from ADT or Google Nest) could also have BLE trackers as well.

Mixed with camera footage and something like Nest Aware applying machine learning to the footage, this deal starts to make sense.

[kevstev]

This already largely exists though. When I had the trial for the nest aware subscription service, it would tell me who was at my door. I forget if I had to manually set up the face recognition, or it did it automagically, but in a crime situation it seems it would be fairly trivial to try to find a match.

Similarly, if their cellphone or watch tried to connect to my wifi, this could be used to pin someone down. They had motion detectors in my house via the nest protects and nest thermostats I have installed. I am not even sure how useful. They already have all the pieces for a good home security system, they just needed some good product management leadership to integrate them all together well and they are done. You can lock in to the ecosystem as well- the pin pads are kind of annoying to deal with, have a google home by the door to ask you to repeat a phrase and it can verify your voice. Its a complete layup yet Google has stood under the basket for several years now refusing to let go of the ball. Its as absurd as it is infuriating.