It wasn’t too long ago that Nest, the company behind the smart thermostat developed by former Apple employee, Tony Fadell, was acquired by Google for a whopping $3.2 billion. Safe to say many were surprised by this as given the design of the Nest thermostat and the fact that Fadell used to work for Apple that Nest would have been a logical acquisition for Apple, sort of like to bring Fadell back into the fold, and also to prevent their competitors, namely Google, from getting ahead. Oddly enough this was not the case. In fact it was even reported that Google was the only serious bidder for the company, which makes us wonder where was Apple in all of this.
In any case despite Apple’s silence on the matter, Fadell has come forward and stated that despite the acquisition by Google, he has no plans on pulling the Nest smart thermostat from Apple’s stores. In fact he states that the ball is pretty much in Apple’s court as to whether they want to continue their relationship with Nest, despite now being a Google-owned company. Speaking to Bloomberg, Fadell stated, “We want to make sure that we offer those things to them [Apple customers], and it’s for Apple to figure out whether or not they want to continue.” What do you guys think? Will Apple remain interested in carrying the Nest thermostat in their stores? After all it would almost be like Apple promoting Google’s products (by extension). We guess we will just have to wait and see, and if you stop seeing Nest thermostats in Apple’s stores, we guess we have our answer.