When Google bought Nest, a company known for trying to reinvent the way people control the heating system in their home, people scratched their heads and wondered what Google would do with them. Five seconds later, we all realized that Nest is actually just a bunch of ex-Apple employees, meaning they know how to build things that people actually want to buy. According to TechCrunch, Google’s probably not going to let Nest continue working on thermostats, but instead it’ll put the newly acquired employees “to work on gadgets that make more sense for the company.”
What makes sense for Google?
Well, it’s obvious with the sale of Motorola that Google doesn’t want to get into the handset business, so that’s something to immediately take off your list. There’s Glass, which is a wearable. The rumored Google Watch, that’s another wearable. The rumored Google set-top box, aka Google TV attempt number nine. There’s actually a lot of things Google can product on their own and sell in vast quantities.
When will we find out about all these new fancy Nest-inspired Google products? Your typical hardware development cycle these days is 12 to 18 months. That means you’ll have to wait until 2015, at the earliest, to see something. Will it be worth the wait and the $3.2 acquisition cost?
We’ll obviously have to wait and see, but something tells me that Google actually did their fans a solid by hiring people who are so obsessive about every little detail of the products they make. That’s not to say Google isn’t, but you can obviously tell they’re a company driven by engineers.
