Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used to Be
This whole saga serves less as a warning to customers and more as a warning to businesses. Be careful about acquiring other companies - liabilities come in many forms.<p>It may have seemed like a great deal when Nest bought Revolv - after all, we know acquihires are usually based on the fact that the acquired company was going under anyways. Pay a minimal amount for a failing company and get some great engineers.<p>But it sounds like they didn&#x27;t anticipate the brand problem they would ultimately face for ending support for a product that was inevitably going to disappear in either case. Something early messaging (say, at the time of the acquisition) could have helped soften.<p>Nest didn&#x27;t build this product - Revolv did. And they banked their company on its success and lost. Nest might be alive and healthy but it doesn&#x27;t seem right to say they somehow acted dishonestly just because they picked up the pieces of a failed company but didn&#x27;t want to prop up a product which nobody wanted.