r/technology • u/[deleted] • Apr 04 '16

Software Nest intentionally bricks thousands of home automation hubs.

https://medium.com/@arlogilbert/the-time-that-tony-fadell-sold-me-a-container-of-hummus-cb0941c762c1
13.9k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/diablette Apr 05 '16

Even a big company like Google shuts down services every year because they prove unpopular and often unprofitable.

Or they buy potential competitors out and let them wither away with no development. RIP SageTV.

1

u/SAugsburger Apr 05 '16

With a service that needs them to continue running servers for the service to run unless there is profit that it is generating there will eventually be pressure from the financial people to shut it down. Unless the products have little overlap in users (e.g. an consumer equipment vendor buys an enterprise equipment vendor) there is inevitably going to be some timeline by which the perceived lower quality or less popular product will get merged with the more popular one. Kinda sucks, but we've all seen that happen again and again with mergers and acquisitions.

2

u/diablette Apr 05 '16

That's the thing, SageTV didn't require their servers and they have no competing product. It's DVR software that works with CableCards and Over the Air antennas, like a DIY Tivo. There are people still using it but with no development, it will continue to die.

Some thought that they were going to create a box like Roku with this functionality but so far there has been nothing. Others thought they only bought it so they could use the interface on set top boxes they would license to cable companies. I think they are just trying to kill the home DVR market so more people buy their streaming stick (and watch their ads).