Last month, Google decided to purchase Nest for about $3.2 billion. Which is just a little more than what Lenovo is paying to buy Motorola from Google. As usual, the FTC has to approve the transaction before it can be official, which was the last road block for Google and Nest. And today, that road block was passed, with the FTC approving the transaction. In most situations, the FTC would be waiting about 30 days before approving anything to be sure that there aren’t any antitrust laws being violated. However with this deal, the FTC decided quickly that there would be no reason to hold up this particular buyout. Hence the FTC approving this buyout within 30 days for the search giant.
Now it’s time for the fun to begin. We still have no real idea as to what Google plans to do with Nest. But from what we’ve been told, Google is looking to use them as their own Motorola. What I mean by that is building all the hardware that Google wants to sell. That includes things like Chromecast devices, and any other side projects Google decides to do. For now, Google is keeping the Nest team intact and allowing it to work just the way it did prior to the purchase. I’d venture to guess that the first thing Google wants to do is to get an Android app for Nest, as it’s iOS only right now.
There are so many things that we think Google could do with Nest and their engineers. The Co-Founder of Nest, Tony Fadell is the engineer that created the design of the very first iPod, which was and still is an icon for Apple and audiophiles. And the rest of the team are former Apple engineers too. So I’d expect some pretty cool hardware designs from them in the future. Hopefully they design the new Chromebook Pixel?