Jokes on them, I block my Nest from talking to the Internet so my electrical company cannot control the damned thing. They had control even after I opted out and Google insisted they unenrolled me in the energy savings plan. Don't enroll in these plans [insert it's a trap gif].
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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That "Smart Energy" discount has shown up in mailings for the last few years and I've considered signing up despite my general dislike of allowing any company more control of my life than they already have.
Why do you say they're a trap? Did they change your thermostat settings far more than they claim or pull other BS you didn't expect?
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Release the specs so users can maintain them themselves.
This sort of thing is one of the reasons I chose a RainMachine irrigation controller over other options, because they specifically marketed their cloud-independent firmware design. It was vindicated a couple years ago when they started going defunct and grasped for recurring revenue by billing for proxied remote access, but even then they emphasized that everything else would continue to function without their servers.
The onus is on the consumer to reward cloud-independent designs like this. While it has been sad to see RainMachine’s collapse, my device indeed just keeps working. Hopefully it isn’t ultimately killed by firmware or app security vulnerabilities since it’s now thoroughly unmaintained.
The problem is, the real money is in either the data that it acquires or in recurring monthly costs.
Unfortunately, making a good, reliable product with no MRCs and no spying means fewer repeat buyers. Which is especially a problem for a niche community like selfhosters and privacy-conscious. You sell the product once and...that's it. Eventually the market is full and some people are upgrading but now your product is selling on the secondary market.
This is business in the 21st century. They can't survive without forced obsolescence, telemetry, and/or MRCs.
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With Google's track record of jumping into a market and after they have millions of users shutting it down, I'm surprised they didn't do this years ago.
How long before Honeywell does the same? The company spun off their residential services division (including thermostats) about 7 years ago and at first things were fine, but in the last couple of years the service has become increasingly unreliable. Their servers have gone down quite a few times and settings changes are sometimes delayed even when the servers are up.
Their Z-Wave thermostat is a nice upgrade without concerns about someone sitting in a corporate America e-suite deciding to pull the plug.
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Glad I chose not to link my info to it to continue using the feature when Google took over.