[Marsymars]

> Meanwhile Ecobee has been producing beautiful hardware and software that has not only caught up but surpassed the 5+ year headstart that Google/Nest squandered.

Ecobee released their first smart thermostat 3 years prior to the first Nest Thermostat. (Not that that's a fault, I've been a happy ecobee user for years.)

[teekert]

I emailed Ecobee years ago if they were available here in the Netherlands and if they were considering it. They said they were looking at it...

It's a shame, Fadell was right to go into the thermostat market. Honeywell still has nothing that looks nice, and, according to the reviews, nothing that functions well. The stuff that comes with HVAC systems are generally expensive but cheap feeling and imho ugly.

In the EU all manufacturers have to support OpenTherm, an open standard, so you'd think this is a big homogeneous market to enter...