[magixx]

Honestly, I don't find it that surprising. I mean the whole advertising industry does exist and will continue to do so. Plus, if they didn't directly hate doing the work itself I could see someone tolerating it especially knowing that google's compensation is pretty good.

[Xorlev]

Most of Google is not dedicated towards building Ads, surfaces where ads are displayed, or collecting data for ads, despite popular perception.

[kevin_thibedeau]

All that other stuff is a loss leader for selling ads.

[Xorlev]

Sorry, but that's not correct. As a counterexample, Google Cloud is not a "loss leader for ads". The hardware division is not a loss leader for ads. There are a myriad of counterexamples.

A loss leader is a product which is used to acquire revenue through a different channel, such as game consoles which often sell at a loss on hardware to encourage game sales.

[pabs3]

Doesn't the hardware produced by Google direct users towards Google services that contain advertising? Or are they producing non-consumer hardware?

[Xorlev]

My Nest devices don't have even tenuous links to advertising.

[ocdtrekkie]

This is incorrect. You were correct with Google Cloud: While it's a market follower that can't even break the top three, it's definitely a non-ad-based business unit.

But Nest is, when viewed in a context that understands why most Google products exist. It should be obvious that Search exists to serve Ads. The first result of every search is generally an ad. That one's easy. Android and Chrome both exist to protect Google Search: They ensure that most people's default experience is to search Google for everything, so they get ads.

Nest is about ads, but you have to look at the competitive context. Apple, Microsoft, Google, are all shipping ecosystems. Large catalogs of products which interoperate best with each other. It's absolutely anticompetitive and most likely illegal, but that's a digression: The issue is that for Android and Chrome to protect Search to serve Ads is that people have to pick Google's ecosystem over other ecosystems. Sure, you can pick Apple's, and Google has paid Apple eleventy-billion dollars to still send you to Google Search, but they can change their minds at any time, and it's more beneficial for Google if they don't have to pay another company for your attention. Also sometimes Apple gets on a privacy kick and makes tracking users harder, which Google wants to do to sell ads better, so they gotta fight that too.

So the issue here is that Apple has iOS and then it has Siri, and then it has HomeKit, which all works very well together and provides a very clean unified experience. If Google didn't have an experience comparable to Apple's experience, people might leave Android for Apple, and that's bad. So products like Nest are entirely there to provide a Google ecosystem that is competitive to other tech companies' ecosystems, so that you view ads.

[skinkestek]

Do you work for Google?

If not, how do you know that data from Nest isn't used to enhance your profile?

I mean: knowing the sounds or patterns of sounds (I'm trying to be generous here and not accuse them of actually using every word spoken near a listening device as input) or just the general pattern of temperature etc could be useful in figuring out what ads to show.

... on a less generous note they mostly don't need that data: their AI has already calculated that if you are a male at least you need to see even more ads for scammy dating sites or - lately - ads for pay-to-win games - possibly with female narrators that could also have been in the aforementioned ads.

[esrauch]

Nest isn't exactly a profit center for Google though. Presumably it makes sense as a foothold into the smarthome/IOT industry which might become a big surface for ads and they wouldn't want to lose that opportunity (like how some companies have been late to web or late to smartphones to their detriment).

[Maken]

There is a comic for that too.

https://goomics.net/70/

[hiptobecubic]

It used to be that way. Now there are several businesses that aren't just surfaces for ads. The productivity suite, cloud, etc

[colinmhayes]

Every google product exists to encourage people to see more ads, even if he product isn't showing the ads.

I encourage anyone to point to a google product that isn't either selling ads or trying to get people to spend more time on the internet so google can sell them more ads.

[Xorlev]

Drive/Docs/Meet. Cloud. Nest. These are a few examples of (though far from the only) products completely orthogonal to ads.

[QuercusMax]

All of Verily, Calico, and Google Health, and Fit/FitBit.

The work I do on AI-based medical device infrastructure has nothing to do with ads.

[paulcole]

> Drive/Docs/Meet

How many people who are active users of these products Bing something when they need to look it up?

[NateEag]

I do, by way of DuckDuckGo.

Granted, I only use those products because my employer uses them internally.

[colinmhayes]

Drive/docs absolutely contributes to google selling ads since it brings you to their home site.

I'll give you cloud and nest though.

[Xorlev]

How do you figure? There's no offramps from Drive or Docs into Search as far as I know. Are you saying that because they're subdomains, it somehow works to get you to ads?

Docs and Drive want to sell you storage and collaboration capabilities. Not ads.

[colinmhayes]

Any product that leads to people spending more time on the internet increases the number of ads google sells.