If you’re an early adopter of Revolv, the smart home company acquired by Nest a few years ago, you may want to take a seat before reading this: Nest is shutting down support for Revolv starting on May 15.
“That’s kind of lame,” you may be thinking. “But you mean it won’t be updated … it’ll still work, right?” Unfortunately, no. Not only will Revolv no longer get updates, but as of May 15, the device will essentially turn into an over-priced hockey puck. Thankfully Revolv was never widely adopted, and the decision likely won’t affect too many people — but you can bet there was outrage when the news spread.
The Revolv smart home hub was taken off the market back in October 2014 when it was bought out by Nest. Since then, however, the team behind Revolv has kept the app and support for the product online.
“We’re pouring all our energy into Works with Nest and are incredibly excited about what we’re making,” said Revolv founders Tim Enwall and Mike Saucie in a blog post. “Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service.”
The move may be frustrating for some, but it hasn’t totally come out of left field. Revolv originally joined Nest to be a part of the “Works with Nest” program, which lets third-party devices interact with Nest’s own devices.
The decision certainly comes at an interesting time for Nest. The company was at the center of a scathing report from The Information last week, which discussed CEO Tony Fadell’s struggles to build the company, as well as that the Dropcam division of the company had failed to live up to expectations, according to Fadell. Ex Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy then fired back at Fadell in an article on Medium, questioning Fadell’s ability to lead the company and saying that selling Dropcam to Nest was a mistake.
