&gt; […] creating a walled garden around the user’s own data is a shady move. All of my private data should be easibly accessible to me though open API without any gimmicks. In its press release Nest promised introducing a public API[,] however [it] seems limited in many ways compared to the internal API used by Nest mobile app - and to add insult to injury - many of its features require an active Nest subscription.<p>This is exactly one reason why using &quot;Cloud&quot; services for long-living things, like Hardware, is a great risk.<p>When Google shuts down Google Reader, we can all migrate to an alternative easily.<p>When Google shuts down Nest, people are left with non-working thermostats, and have to spend money and rebuild their systems to continue on.<p>Even worse, if just the internet goes down – not that rare in areas in the US only served by one ISP which doesn’t have to fear competition – one is even left without heating.<p>The reaction of the people on the recent case where Nest went down itself, and people were left without heating, fits well as context for the following excerpt from &quot;The Sorcerers Apprentice&quot; (1797, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe):<p><pre><code>    Herr, die Not ist groß!      Sir, my need is sore.
    Die ich rief, die Geister    Spirits that I&#x27;ve called
    werd ich nun nicht los.      My commands ignore.</code></pre>