Google Kills Software Support For Many Nest Users, Eroding Trust In The Brand
from the 'I-am-altering-the-deal,-pray-I-don't-alter-it-further." dept
Google is developing a tried and true reputation for buying products people like, making them worse, then pulling the rug out from under users’ feet. That’s been a particular problem with Google’s purchase of FitBit, which has generally resulted in less useful hardware, more paywalls, more annoying nickel-and-diming efforts, and just a more miserable user experience overall.
It’s also been a pain in the ass for folks who bought into the Nest smart-home ecosystem. Google has consistently pared back on features and restricted openness for the platform, ensuring Nest doesn’t play as well with other systems. Now Google says it’s pulling software support for the first two generation of Nest thermostats (which made the brand popular in the first place), restricting a bunch of functionality:
“We made the difficult decision that starting October 25, 2025, Nest Learning Thermostat (1st gen, 2011), Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen, 2012), and Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen, Europe version, 2014) will no longer receive software updates. You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat.”
Google is also stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe because it found adapting to European build requirements too much of a hassle. Google also just announced it was discontinuing the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and Nest x Yale Lock.
You can argue that a decade is a reasonable expected lifespan for a product to have its support phased out, but many thermostats are historically used for decades. And Google is making absolutely no effort to open source the hardware to allow owners to explore extending the lifespan. Ultimately it’s both environmentally harmful and injures consumer relationships built over decades across brands.
Nest users in the Ars Technica and Verge forums are understandably annoyed:
“NEST is intentionally crippling a product that works well. How can I trust that they won’t do it again with other of their products?”
There’s no short term money in quality control and protecting your brand and existing relationships with consumers. So Google, chasing the impossible allure of unstoppable quarterly growth and the AI hype cycle, routinely has been cutting corners on product quality and longevity — increasingly notable in everything from its lagging interest in its own smart home line to sagging Google Search quality.
In the earlier aughts, Google was an interesting, innovative, and occasionally even ethical company. The fall off has been anything but subtle.
Filed Under: customers, enshittification, hardware, heating, nest, smart home, software
Companies: google
Comments on “Google Kills Software Support For Many Nest Users, Eroding Trust In The Brand”
Bo Knows
… that 15 years of support is more than you should expect for any single purchase.
Only losing the ability to control it from your phone has to be the biggest non-story in tech.
Re:
What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.
My perfectly good truck, with only a little over 100knon the odometer and that I bought in 2012, should be scrapped in two years.
Get the fuck out of here with this anti consumer bullshit.
What should be LAW is that any product that requires a backend service to operate MUST be opened at the end of life or migrated to a new platform for a number of years after the last sale date. Lower for cheap shit, higher for expensive stuff.
Re: Re:
Bo is a fucking moron. That’s what is the fuck.
That, and the idiotic reference to an idiot and his meme.
Re:
Bo Knows
… that picking a username that was last relevant 35 years ago is what you should expect from a dipshit
Re:
Then the product should be advertised prominently stating that.
There’s also an easy solution here, of open sourcing things at EOL when possible.
Losing features you paid for is not something we should normalize.
These companies keep providing proof why it’s a bad idea to buy their products meant for long-term use.
Re:
And in doing so they fail to realise that it makes them as disposable as their products.
Dumb everything
Who would have thought, buying dumb things is smart now.
What about newer models?
I’m curious when Nest will officially announce a mandatory subscription fee for its newer models.
The reality is that maintaining cloud infrastructure to allow users remote access to their thermostats isn’t free. At some point, Nest will need to recoup these costs—either by introducing a subscription fee or by reducing support for certain features/devices.
Right now, every Nest thermostat comes with a free tier of service, even the latest models. But that likely won’t last forever. Sooner or later, users may have to choose between paying for a subscription or upgrading to a new device (brand?) that includes support.
This highlights a broader issue common to many IoT companies: they launched hardware at prices that could only cover a limited window of ‘free’ cloud services. Perhaps they assumed they’d eventually create a premium service compelling enough to convert users en masse. Or maybe they believed ongoing service costs would be offset by continued hardware sales—something akin to a pyramid model.
Either way, those assumptions are being tested. The market is now forcing companies like Nest to confront the gap between a successful (innovative) product launch and a sustainable long-term business model.
Re:
Or allowing things to be run locally. The reality is, most IoT devices don’t actually need the cloud for most functionality. There’s an exception for a few services, but a lot of the desire for using the cloud goes back to things like data collection, not necessity.
Re: Re:
Exactly. And let’s remember, they’re making a fortune off of the data collection, so all this whining about “The cloud isn’t free they have to charge us!” is just as dumb as all the excuses for why it’s ok that they kill off perfectly functioning products.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
This article reads as so biased I think it may be my last visit to BestNetTech. If you need a bit of contrast to see it, check out the Verge’s write-up about this (linked in this very article).
Re:
You know, this isn’t an airport. There’s no need to announce your departure.
Re:
BYE FELICIA!!!
I like when a company starts by “We made the difficult decision” just as if difficult mean courageous, especially when you bought Nest for $3B ten years ago and doesn’t find some spare money to keep products updated once in a while.
As for the Nest thing, nobody could be seriously thinking that a IoT device could get more than 15y of support.
“NEST is intentionally crippling a product that works well. How can I trust that they won’t do it again with other of their products?”
The answer is too obvious to even need to say it.
Google’s new tagline should read, “Making Smart products for Dumb people”.
Re:
FTFY. YW.
I never trusted IOT for just this reason.
Hardware as a service where you have to “buy” it first was always anti-consumer. Doubly so when the hardware does not function without connecting to a service.
“We made the difficult decision…”
Judging from their past behavior, cancelling support for older products is something Google finds very easy.
I’ll be damned if I’ll ever buy anything from Google. Past behavior predicts future behavior.
This makes it sound like too many competing standards rather than regulatory burden. I’d actually like some details here. Any European HVAC specialists on TD?
Glad I ditched my Nest thermostat within a year of purchase. For an internet connected, notification capable device not to have a low battery warning is tech malpractice. And they included the Magic Mouse charge location, so you can’t charge it while it’s in use. Dynamite.
Re:
I’ve always wondered why these new thermostats even need batteries for normal operation. They’re connected to power from the wall, and that 24 volts or whatever was good enough for the thermostats of the 1980s (many of which are still in use). Modern supercapacitors and such should be good enough to keep a clock running during power outages.
Of course, that only raises the question of whether all these programmable thermostats are even useful. In the 1990s, the idea of having a thermostat save power by not heating or cooling while people were at work seemed theoretically useful. But most people were bad at programming them, and often had families that made for more complexity than the manufacturers envisioned, and people just left them on “hold” mode. I guess an easy-to-use app can help with that, for the few years it actually works. And if the home is unoccupied long enough and consistently enough to achieve useful power savings—which is not gonna happen with people working from home, or while the kids are home during peak cooling season.
I say, if you’ve got an old thermostat, even a mercury one, just keep it. Those things run trouble-free basically forever, and it’s trivial to adjust it quickly while walking by (before bed, for example).
Re: Re:
I have an ecobee, which uses the 24V from the furnace instead of batteries.
The programming worked great for a couple years. It was a simple schedule. Everybody was gone during the weekdays, home in the evening, and sleeping at night. Then covid hit, and we were all home all the time, so a complex schedule wasn’t needed.
Now, with one or both adults working from home every day, we don’t need daytimes as cool in the summer or warm in the winter but we still need it comfortable to be able to work. These days, I still have the programming set up, but override it more frequently based on whether we are home or not.
My Nest has been dumb for the last 1 1/2 years since the WiFi died. I have not noticed any difference between smart and dumb. Once you have the schedule programmed you almost never need to modify it.
It’s not “Nest”, it’s Google. And despite the headline, Google’s absolutely trustworthy in this regard. They will kill the products their customers depend on, long before those customers are done with them. I suspect they’re gonna end up like General Electric—a big well-known conglomerate that seems to be everywhere, although it seems to be more about financial engineering than anything ordinary people care about.
Google’s long, well documented history of abandoning products was a major factor in my decision to go with an ecobee thermostat instead of a nest.
Here's what happens next
Google just painted a target on all of these devices, because now attackers know that any/all vulnerabilities in them won’t be fixed. Ever.
Attackers have six months to do reconnaissance and stockpile any exploits they devise…because on 10/26/2025, it’s open season.
I’m sure that Google knows this — well, the engineers certainly do. But apparently management doesn’t care that they’re turning long-time customers/early adopters into potential victims. “Don’t be evil” is a long way in the rear-view mirror at this point.
Re:
Or did they prevent that by taking them offline in October?
"difficult"?
dis you –> https://killedbygoogle.com/ ??
Re:
I’m sure it wasn’t difficult on Google’s end. Just for their users.
Normally I would agree, but I take some issue with this statement:
Google’s own statement, which is also included, states that it can continue to be used locally. Yes, you lose the cloud connectivity, but that also isn’t a feature of those thermostats that are ‘historically used for decades.’
I do agree that Google could do more to open those old thermostats, and I hope they still will (see Stadia), but It’s not the same as completely disabling the fundamental use as other products that reach EoL have.
Re:
You’re right, but I don’t think that substantially changes the analysis. Companies such as Nest (later Google) convince people to spend extra to get a “smart” thing with extra features. And a short time later, those people are bascially back where they started—a device no better than we had in the 1990s. If that’s what they wanted, they could’ve been shopping in thrift stores (which is, by the way, not a bad idea).
Unfortunately I LIKE my Nest thermostat, lock, and cameras including my door bell. I liked my hubs but they suck balls to various degrees now, and my Shield is increasingly getting on my nerves.
I am slowly moving away from Google, but it’s painful to find something that isn’t as fucking rickety as them. Was actively saving money for a Sonos system to replace the speakers….then Boom…they shit down their leg.
Wait a minute...
… there are still people out there who don’t expect Google to kill products/services like it’s their favorite hobby?
Re:
I think there are still some people relying on Gmail accounts…
Also, it’s not so crazy that the early adopters of Nest failed to see the death-by-Google risk, given that Google didn’t own Nest at the time.