Google gets into the kitchen

Google gets into the kitchen. It has acquired Nest Labs for $3.2 billion (€2.3 billion), a company that began to become famous a couple of years ago for its line of smart home thermostats. Nest will continue to operate under its own brand. The deal is the second largest in Google's history, after the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola's mobile division, which, two years after its purchase, has only accumulated losses and judicial fiascos in its patent litigation. Like the Motorola deal, which marked Google's first major foray into the world of devices, Nest should give Google a springboard into the home consumer market, an increasingly important market with the Internet of Things, that is, all devices connected to the Web. A sector in which it will find other well-established brands, such as Samsung or LG. "Nest seems to be focused on thermostats and smoke detectors, but it's not far-fetched to think that Google will expand this technology to other devices," Wedbush analyst Shyam Patil told Bloomberg. "Home automation is one of the biggest opportunities when talking about the Internet of Things. This acquisition expands its strategy around that." It is not the first foray. A few months ago it introduced an Internet connection for the television and in 2012 a music system, which never went on sale, and also a PowerMeter, a meter of the energy consumed that had no success and closed in 2011. After announcing the purchase, Google's stock rose 0.5% to $1,128. Nest, founded in 2010, is headquartered in Palo Alto, near Ideo, one of the leading technology device design firms. With that firm it shares the aesthetics of objects. Its founder Tony Fadell managed to make ugly home thermostats beautiful, as they acquired tones similar to those of the wall, and at the same time smart, as they record the history of room temperatures to automatically establish the operation of heating or air conditioning. Fadell, who is credited with the design of the iPod, will remain at the helm of the company along with co-founder Matt Rogers and his entire team. One third of its 300 employees are ex-Apple. According to the Bloomberg agency, some commentators on Twitter expressed concern about the privacy implications of Google's deal, which collects mountains of personal data about its users' online habits. "Not content with their personal data, Google now wants source data through the purchase of Nest ", wrote Irene Ng on Twitter. "So, basically, Google will know when the homeowner is away, when the homeowner has had a fire and what their electricity bill is" tweets Brian Makas, who adds the hashtag # creepy to his comment. The concern of these people does not seem far-fetched. In an interview with Reuters, Fadell clarifies that, during the purchase negotiations, the company spent a lot of time talking with Google about privacy issues. "The issue is a matter for Google, but they take privacy very seriously," added Fadell, who noted that Nest's terms of service were not going to change. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which backed Nest with $20 million in 2010, has seen the profits of its bet multiplied by 20 in just three years.