Tony Fadell, Nest, and the Failure of a Middle Ground

Tony Fadell is an uncompromising product-design guy who knows how to tell a story. The best story he ever told was about the world’s most boring product—the thermostat—and how a mundane dial to turn the heat up and down could be transformed into a thing of beauty and the portal to a new way of living (and worth spending two hundred and fifty dollars on). He told a story about a home—one with connected smoke detectors and security cameras, too—that would sense our presence, respond to our every need, and make the planet greener at the same time, a haven run by a data-connected Internet of Things. Google bought that story, in the form of Fadell’s company, Nest, for $3.2 billion, two years ago. But Google wasn’t buying just the company; it was also buying Fadell. A close confidant of Steve Jobs, Fadell had been mentored in the art of beautiful and elegant products by the master himself.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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