More and more apps are being created to help you protect your home,
start your car, check your baby’s vitals, and more. But how far are we willing
to go? We use our smartphones for almost everything already. It seems google
really wants to own and control all these smartphone apps and, in turn,
basically be the sole provider of products controlling your everyday. For
example, Google just bought another company called Nest that helps change your
home into a smarthome.
What Is Nest?
Nest is a small startup company that uses algorithms and sensors to
determine how to keep your home at a comfortable temperature without wasting
money. It tracks your behavior patterns in your home and heats it based on
that. For example, the system knows when you come home from work every day and
will heat up the house a half hour before you get there to make sure it is
warm. You can still control the thermostat on your own, but it is also smart
enough to tell when it is too hot, too cold, or just needs to be adjusted for
the person in the room.
The only other thing Nest sells at the moment are smart smoke
detectors/carbon monoxide detectors. They are smart enough to be able to tell
the difference between a fire and a little bacon grease, and they can pinpoint
exactly which smoke detector is going off in your home. You will know exactly
which room is in danger, and you can hush it with a wave of your hand. On top
of that, the detector won’t beep in the middle of the night to tell you the
battery is dead. Instead, it will send you an email notification to let you
know it is going to die soon. All of these products are quickly accessed and
controlled by your smartphone apps.
Google Purchased Nest
News just broke that Google purchased Nest. And though technology
companies buying other ones is a pretty normal thing, many wonder what the
reason is for this purchase. Maybe it was just to buy a promising start-up
venture or maybe it was to get control over a new kind of idea of controlling
your home through smartphone apps. According to USA Today, the merger was
intended to help Nest grow faster and get more customers, but Google likely has
more in mind than just making a good financial investment.
Integrating Smartphones Into Everything
As a huge tech company, Google knows what it is doing by getting controlling
interests in companies that focus specifically on home control through
smartphone apps. Obviously Google wants to monopolize on the idea of
smartphones helping us to monitor our homes and daily habits. Nest can get
Google there if smart technology is incorporated into more of our daily lives.
The question isn’t whether or not the technology is here or whether or not it
will be available in just a few years. The real questions for Google is whether
or not it is going to monopolize the market for smart home technology and how
smartphones will be used to create a smart home.
Mobile technology news brought to you by businesstexter.com
Source: usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/14/google-nest-acquisition-safe-home/4474843/
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