Google's Nest flings HALF an INSTAGRAM at Dropcam buyout

Google's home automation push has a new view of the world after its Nest subsidiary wrote a half-Instagram ($555m) cheque for camera-maker Dropcam. Dropcam's cameras use Wi-Fi to beam video out of your home or office and into the cloud, from where it can either be beamed back to a variety of devices for you to watch it in real …

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean...

All new fridges will now come with a web-cam? That way I can if it's my cat or someone else that drinks all the milk...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does this mean...

We still don't know if the light really does go off when the fridge door closes, we now have a way to find out...wifi cams running 24/7 on the inside!

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Detect a bright day

If that's what they are planning on using this for, I would've guessed that they would just glue a wide-angle lens onto a photo-resistor. Or better yet, they could hook into the various weather services and create much better prediction for the weather rather than relying on what the sky looks like at that moment.

[Fred Flintstone]

And there we go ..

.. Google homeview is almost there.

[David 138]

hopefully they will release a UK version of Dropcam.

[Mark 85]

A bit chilling...

Quote: Rogers also says Nest's privacy policies will apply to Dropcam so there should be no snooping or ads.

This is Google who ultimately owns them. And NSA/GCHQ/acronym of choice - has access to the cloud where the images/video is stored. Can Dropcam guarantee our privacy?

And then there's this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/23/hold_interthreat/

Thus a simple miscreant could see when you're not home, or maybe wife/daughter is home alone... or where the family jewelry is stashed.

So.. Mr. Rogers... can you guarantee that our images/videos will be safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

500 mils for that?

I can see no feature that does not currently exists or can be easily implemented, as once you have a camera, the rest is standard software development. I was thinking that 50 mils would be plenty, but oh well.

[SVV]

This is what happens when accountants take charge of companies

How stupid are Google's management bods that were involved in this decision?

I think they made the decision based purely on how this would affect their share price.

However I already have a Google device that has a camera and a wi-fi connection and the software to integrate them. It's called a Nexus tablet : did no-one realise how easy it would be to take the parts of this tech that are relevant to this amazeballs new product out of the tablet and add a better cam and put it into a me-too competitor product? For far less than this money? And did they not think that if this wi-fi webcam they've paid so much for ever takes off, then the market will instantly flood with cheapo copies from the far East (see MP3 players, etc for parallel)