Revolv (VC: $7.3mm) made a dingus to smarten up your home. I guess it turned your lights on when you told it to with your phone, but nobody is really sure. Nest bought them back in October 2014 and discontinued said dingus with a quickness, but kept its cloud service running. As of May 15 2016 the free ride is over.
Why is this happening? First of all, no one bought this thing. It also hasn’t been sold in 18 months and Nest clearly viewed it as an evolutionary dead end. The fact that Revolv was acqui-shutdowned by Nest pretty much says everything there is to say about the success of their product.
How much notice? 45 days. I mean, it’s just the thing that (hypothetically) controls your entire house so that shouldn’t be a big deal right? Nest is trying to get sold or shutdown themselves you know, they don’t have all day for this.
How screwed are customers? If someone bought said dingus (which included a lifetime subscription, where by lifetime they actually meant the length of time a Nest product manager’s political capital could be drained to sustain the service) right before it was pulled from shelves, they wound up paying $17 per month for it. For just the price of 9 cups of coffee each month, this ugly red tupperware container / irregular tortilla holder was yours to keep. And once it’s useful Internet-of-Dumb-Things lifespan is over, it has a long second life ahead of it as a paperweight or cautionary reminder of the fickleness of The Cloud.
How do people feel about it? Pretty safe to say people care more about the death of Revolv than they ever cared about it during its life.
Was the phrase ‘Incredible Journey’ used? No, but the sentiment is clearly there. The thing you liked “wasn’t perfect”, the team has gone on to make something “flat-out better”, and most importantly shutting down is only “the beginning”. The beginning, perhaps, of a new and even more incredible journey?