Google Nest Rumored To Be Moving Into Audio

CIStud writes Google's Nest, best known for its innovated smart Nest thermostats and Nest Protect smoke detectors, has posted several new job positions for "Nest Audio" including a leadership position to handle "acoustics, audio electronics, audio SW, audio test and validation for all Nest Products." From the TechCrunch article: "This is a new frontier for Nest. The company has so far utilized little audio in its products. Instead, Nest has so far recruited a couple of audio companies to join Nest’s world of Internet of Things through the 'Works With Nest' developer program. 'Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone. We’ve had great momentum, but [Google] is a rocket ship,' said co-founder Tony Fadell when Google bought the company."

LOLOLOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's Nest, best known for its innovated smart Nest thermostats and Nest Protect smoke detectors

Yeah those smoke detectors were definitely "innovated" [dailytech.com]:

According to Nest, the Nest Wave function -- which allows users to turn their alarm off by simply waving their hand -- could be activated accidentally, thus potentially endangering lives if a real fire were to occur.

Squeezeplay

[fluffernutter]

So it is going to be like Squeezeplay, but connected to proprietary products instead of a server that runs on almost any hardware and free clients/controllers that you can install on windows/linux/android at will?

We'll see how it does. If it was Apple, I would say people would almost certainly buy it.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a major point of the article is that nobody knows what is going to be like yet. I have no idea how you made that leap of (ill)-logic.

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[fluffernutter]

I wasn't aware Slashdot had forbidden imagination. That explains why there are so few articles on unicorns.

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[montulli]

I was/am a huge fan of Squeezeplay and the Squeezebox product lines. If Nest could combine the flexibility of Squeezebox, the simplicity of Sonos or Apple, and the reasonable prices of Google, they would have an amazing hit.

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[fluffernutter]

Yes, the Squeezebox stuff could benefit from better GUIs and being alittle more seamless, still it is an amazing product on the back end.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I stumbled onto the whole home automation market by accident recently, and am really frustrated. So much potential wasted by people trying to monopolize your money, when they'd all make money by being more open [libre].

Here's my rules:

1. Any home automation product should not depend on external servers. E.g., if I want to know the status of my thermostat, or humidity sensor, I should be able to access that information and communicate with the units from the LAN without going outside the home. As a corollary

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[radl33t]

buy and root the wink hub, many radios. many places it ends up free if you spend $12- $16 on a couple of z wave LED lights. otherwise its $50

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[tlhIngan]

but connected to proprietary products instead of a server that runs on almost any hardware

I never understood why people liked the squeezebox better than other alternatives. I had an AudioTron, and it required zero software installation on Windows and OS X, and one useful package on Linux. It relied solely on SMB and didn't need any indexing server or anything. You gave it a user account and it could either self discover the shares or you could explicitly point your music share to it and it indexed that.

Ma

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[fluffernutter]

I'm not sure of the capibilities of Audiotron, but Squeezeplay allows me to switch sources, whether it be a radio service like pandora or mp3s on disk. It also searches through live feeds of radio on the internet. I am not in a big city and most of my local stations are available. And yes there is the syncing ability, I can have the same service playing all through my house if I want, or I can have every player on a different source.

Oblig. XKCD

[tool462]

I feel like Randall was trolling /. with this one, but it's right on the money here:
http://xkcd.com/1497/ [xkcd.com]

Great news

[Anonymous Coward]

Google found a way to place always-on microphones in everyone's homes. Fuck this company.

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[Lunix Nutcase]

The NSA is likely very excited about the opportunity.

Mod parent up

[mbstone]

There must be some organized effort of Google fanchildren that mods down posts critical of them.

Obv. Google isn't satisfied with the amount of information they already have on you, now they want to bug your bedroom.

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[radl33t]

How about you don't use these products? I don't get the nonstop privacy outrage. Why can't I give away mine?

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[bmimatt]

Google found a way to place always-on microphones in everyone's homes. Fuck this company.

Why downmodded? The AC is making a valid point.

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[jmac_the_man]

Home audio generally means the opposite of that. You're listening to stuff sent to you by Google. Google isn't listening to stuff sent by you.

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[PPH]

Why audio? Can't the Nest [postimg.org] just real lips?

Competition is fierce in that market

[Karmashock]

... I don't see the point really.

I already blew my wad

[TechyImmigrant]

On a couple of Sonoses.

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[Anonymous Coward]

SONOS rules!

I'm guessing they're targetting Sonos

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like Sonos is the biggest competitor with that exact functionality. Kind of like Google TV for audio. Stick the smart box somewhere, control it from your phone/tablet/pc but you don't have to stream directly from your phone/tablet/pc.

TIOT is going to be the end of us all...

[bjwest]

I'll say this again... Fuck The Internet of Things. Thermostats, smoke detectors, ovens, refrigerators, LED light bulbs and now audio? How much of our privacy and control are we going to give away? Networked devices are fine - if I retain full control and keep usage stats inhouse, but I'll be damed if I'll give control and monitoring over to any corporation in the name of "convenience". Why in hell does my temperature adjustment or light turning on or off or dimming need to go into the cloud, frigging before it even happens? There's enough processing power in a Raspbery Pi to handle the needs of the majority of homes, fuck your cloud spy devices.

Todays iCrap outage should be a wake up call, but I fear it won't. They'll patch (not fix, patch) whatever caused that, blame the problem on some terrorist group, and say it's all good. It'll happen again, and it'll be the same same again.

I'm glad I'm a do it yourselfer who can hack my house to do what I want it to do, because believe me, I will never give that much control and info of my life over to anyone. The rest of you... Well, if you handen't've (yes, that's a word) been such dicks to the nerds in high school/college, maybe you'd have someone to help you out.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Your meds are next to the glass of water.

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[radl33t]

In principle I have no problem giving up control or data. I choose otherwise because I enjoy DIY. Why does it make you so angry I and other brainless consumers have the freedom to choose?

Can't be hushed here!

[citizenr]

Can't be hushed here, now in 7.1!

Next up for Google Nest

[ThatsNotPudding]

Pod Bay door control.