Who do the products we buy really belong to?
In October 2014, Nest Labs announced it was buying Revolv, a company that makes communications hubs that connect different devices around the home and allows users to control them using an app. Nest is a company that makes home automation devices such as the well-known intelligent thermostats and smoke detectors, created by Tony Fadell, a former Apple employee, that was bought by Google (now Alphabet) back in February 2014.
The reasons for the purchase of Revolv given at the time were that Nest had gone from making devices for specific functions such as heating, smoke detection, or monitoring via cameras (through the acquisition of Dropcam) to making a range of products built around the idea of the intelligent home, based on a specific hub. But what was really going on was a so-called acquihire: the Revolv team was, according to Matt Rogers, Nest’s co-founder, “the best team out there”.
Revolv was a device that really appealed to home automation geeks: a cutting-edge device, ahead of its time, that could connect all kinds of things, and that also promised a free, life-long service and update deal. The device cost $299 and you were ready to connect just about anything connectable, safe in the knowledge that as new products and services appeared on the market, you would receive updates to connect them, and that your service contract would roll over.
Yesterday, Nest sent an update to Revolv owners telling them their device would soon cease to work. This wasn’t simply a question of no more updates: the company was going to make the thing stop working. Deactivate it. Understandably, quite a few owners were unhappy about this, and the issue soon went viral, with a number of publications picking up on the story and asking the obvious question: who does the product a user buys really belong to? For somebody who bought Revolv, once the product is deactivated, it’s less use than a sandwich box.
In this instance, we’re talking about a product-cum-service. The device is no use without the app that allows you to interact with it. When the company that sold it to you ceases to exist, what happens to all those promises they made when you bought it? Are we now to understand that “lifetime” means “lifetime of the company”? Or does it refer to the lifetime of the device? And even if the company goes under or is bought out, why deactivate devices that have plenty of life left in them, even if they are no longer updated?
The issue here is not a promise of “lifetime service” but just who owns the object in question. Most of us assume that we own the thing we buy. But we are now seeing that in a growing number of cases, ownership is as much about service. In which case, if the company that sold you the product is no longer able to provide service, for whatever reason, what happens? Are we simply supposed to accept being abandoned after paying for something on the basis of a promise of a “lifetime” service?
Meanwhile, as a result of the hullabaloo, Nest has said it will reimburse or compensate Revolv owners whose devices are to be deactivated. But the bigger question remains, and affects more and more products: we no longer own the products we buy. How long we are prepared to accept this without protest in our increasingly bidirectional world is another question.
(En español, aquí)
