The big news today is Google’s purchase of Nest, the people that brought me that fancy thermostat. Sigh. I’m not bagging on Google with my disappointment in this acquisition. I’d be almost as sad if Apple were writing the check.

What I loved about the Nest is that it was an upstart. It was a group of rebels taking a serious look at home automation and coming up with innovative products that they charged money for. There were no complex business models. There were no “downstream monetization” plans. I just bought their thermostat and added some techie magic to my life.

I can’t help but wonder that being a small cog in a big machine makes Nest less useful to me than it was as a big cog in a small machine.