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The Internet of Your House: What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Nest gets cozier with its parent company and introduces the Nest Developer program. We imagine the worst and best case scenarios.
Image: James Vaughan/Flickr

To the surprise of no one, Nest Labs announced that it's going to start sharing information with its adopted-parent company, Google. After mulling over the question, “Well, what's the worst that could happen?” for 10 minutes, then half an hour, then an entire afternoon, I realized that maybe I'm having an irrational reaction to the gradual but inevitable transfer of everything to the internet.

The point of paying $3.2 billion for Nest, after all, was to put Google (and by extension Android) squarely in the middle of the internet of things, and the homes of the not-so-distant future. So when Matt Rogers, the founder of the smart thermostat maker, first said that Google was going to start connecting apps to Nest, he already knew he had to say something to assuage privacy fears, and verily, he did.

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“Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change,” Rogers wrote in a blog post that assured users that the terms and conditions would be made clear and they would have to opt in for their data to be shared.

But given that before I go anywhere, I generally Google it, Google Map it, and Google Map it again several times en route, I'm pretty sure Google knows where I am most of the time, and the company already has my life pretty well laid out—which Rogers basically acknowledged by saying that at Nest, “We’re not telling Google anything that it doesn’t already know.”

The worst it can do is just inundate me with advertising, I thought, and lo, there's reason to believe that it will. The Washington Post reports that just last month, “Google revealed in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is looking at ways to put ads on devices such as refrigerators and thermostats.”

And what else should Google and Nest announce today, but a developer suite aimed at the people who make not only refrigerators and thermostats, but garage door openers, car manufacturers, and wearable tech. “The Nest Developer Program … makes it possible for Nest and the more than 5,000 developers who’ve expressed interest in the program to work together to create meaningful interactions among Nest products and others—both inside and outside of the home,” the blog announced.

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It was here that the best and worst case scenarios of the Nest-inflected world came into focus.

Image: James Vaughan/Flickr

The Worst Case Scenario:

You awaken in what feels like a boiling hot home. Your Logitech Harmony draws the shades automatically and turns on the lights. As you check your email on your Android device, it seems like there's just a few too many ads for vacations to the delightful “Bed, Brin, and Breakfast” in Mountain View, California, where the temperature is currently 75 degrees and breakfast is waiting. Your Jawbone UP kicks to life upon realizing that you're up and tells you that your shower is running now. You hear the water and your shower song of choice (that Blind Melon song about rain) click on in the bathroom.

As you stand and stretch, Jawbone UP coughs and mentions how it must be nice having the whole place to yourself when you get up, but, you know, OK Cupid is free and easy to sign up for. You toss the UP onto the bed and could swear that it cracks a joke to your Philips Hue smart lightbulbs about how it knows it isn't a Fitbit and the lights chuckle and flicker as you leave the room.

In the bathroom, your shower explains that it's out of hot water because both the dishwasher and washing machine were running in the off-peak hours of 2 am to 6 am, and that you should really upgrade to the body monitoring/assessment showerhead, which times your shower to optimize shampoo-rinsing and switches to cold water for a final rinse, so as to prevent winter dry skin. “Also,” the showerhead adds, “none of the Body-Wash data I collect would be sold to some fetish website like those smart toilets you hear about.”

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The toilet takes umbrage with the repetition of this totally unsubstantiated rumor and begins flushing itself furiously. The sound of that Blind Melon song about the rain starting for a third time is too much and you splash the alternatingly too-cold and too-hot water on your face and arm pits and notice you're running late. As you're drying off, the shower mentions that it can get you free shipping on Gillette razors, “if you want to get that under control.”

A twinge of regret hits you as you realize that none of the products are a Rube Goldberg breakfast maker, à la Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. You joke about this with the fridge while you grab a Go-Gurt, and it reminds you that Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and thousands of other great titles are available on Netflix.

As you step into the garage, the Chamberlain 3/4 HP Belt Whisper Drive Garage Door Opener garage door closes at your pre-appointed time of 8:25 am, shutting you in complete darkness. After some minutes of groping, you find the car's door handle, sit down, and fire up the Mercedes. For whatever reason the other appliances seem to respect you more when the commands come from the car. As you adjust the temperature in the house—it was 86 degrees when you woke up! Too hot!—your Nest Protect carbon monoxide detector picks up the car exhaust and the lights in the garage turn on, flashing red. The Chamberlain whirrs to life and the Mercedes assures you that the fire department is on its way and also that “If This Then That” automatically notified your mother.

Noting the time, and deciding to take initiative, your IFTTT then also fires off a quick, preemptive “excuse email” and company-wide everyone at work is reassured that you'll be a little late because you're running by the pharmacy. En route, you are unnerved as you start getting noticing ads for job-placement services on the heads-up display. Mom calls twice.

Best Case Scenario:

Someone develops a Nest Management suite of hardware and software that finally frees you from the constant concern of what temperature your living space is, and, for once, compounding technology solves the problem that it causes.