Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by mikeash on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @10:55PM (#19855530)

We expect web services to go away eventually. We expect physical products to keep working until they physically break. The problem is when companies sell physical products with a web service as a fundamental part of the product. Companies want to treat the web service like any other web service, while their customers reasonably expect their physical product to act like any other physical product.

Edit: I want to add that this is a really easy problem to solve. Support or create an open standard for the communication between the device and the server. Allow the device to be reconfigured to communicate with other servers. Then you can shut down your service and owners can keep on going. Better yet, make it so that our device can communicate on the LAN without needing a server at all. These problems exist not because they’re some inevitable fact of life, but because these companies see more value in not fixing them.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by Joky on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @12:15AM (#19855808)

Are the physical devices not working after this change, or rather some of the applications developed for these devices need to switch to another API?

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by toomuchtodo on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @01:28AM (#19856089)

There is no other API to switch to, as Google controls the protocol, no open standard exists to replicate the Nest API server, and Nest devices don’t support targeting a self hosted API.

If you as a user or third party provider integrated with this API and rely on it for functionality, you have no alternative nor recourse.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by Joky on Saturday May 11, 2019 @12:54AM (#19884639)

Isn't "Works with Google Assistant" supposed to become the replacement API? It seems like they don't offer direct access to the data or the device but plan to allow "some" level of control? (I don't know the space, apologize if my questions are naive...)

> As a Works with Nest developer and partner, you will not be able to access or control Nest devices once the Works with Nest APIs are turned off on August 31, 2019. Moving forward, our team will focus on making Works with Google Assistant the most helpful and intelligent ecosystem for the home, enabling all of the products in your users’ homes to work together. We encourage all smart home developers to visit the Actions on Google Smart Home developer site to learn how to integrate your devices or services with the Google Assistant.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by cge on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @05:44AM (#19857305)

Part of the issue here is that many IoT products use web services as part of functions that don't need them at all. The cynic within me suggests that this is an intentional choice to allow for enforced obsolescence.

Beyond this, apps can be updated to remove or decrease support for older devices, and here our focus on trying to insist on auto-updated apps to fix security problems, or on apps that are designed to receive server-side updates, causes significant problems.

At some point, for example, I'm going to have to stop using the Philips Hue app, because I have an older Hue bridge. Support for the older bridge was at some point removed from the main app (and accompanied by an advertisement for the newer bridge), and moved to a legacy one, which seems to have a significantly slower response time. Now the legacy app has popups noting that web services will no longer support older hubs, and other services will be degraded... along with advertisements for the newer hubs. I expect at some point the app will simply be intentionally broken, entirely.

Fortunately, in this case, I can just use other apps, and other systems entirely, if need be, and at least the older hardware supports entirely local APIs (unless Philips decides to push a firmware update to break them?). I'm certainly not going to replace hardware that works with new hardware that provides no benefits, and throw away the old hardware; this would make no sense.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by User23 on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @12:30AM (#19855889)

I’m really glad I bought a pantelligent because it only cost me $40 to learn that IoT is a giant scam.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @05:33AM (#19857246)

I think you'll find it's Western Capitalism that's the scam and that IoT is still a reasonable idea.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by User23 on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @11:42AM (#19859922)

I haven’t found that at all. Why don’t you explain, because I’m curious which non-western non-capitalist system prevents IoT devices from becoming worthless without warning when the vendor ceases support or fails altogether.

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Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by Jedi72 on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @11:32PM (#19855647)

> this is a really easy problem to solve. Support or create an open standard...

We call it the tech industry but 90% of it is actually politics. Big money influences things the most but everyone basically looks out for their own interest, right down to programmers shilling their favourite language/framework. Thats what makes this a difficult problem.

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