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"  Google dives into the smart home space in a huge way with today&amp;#039;s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs, the Palo Alto-based home automation company best known for its smart thermostat and smoke detector. &amp;quot;Nest&amp;#039;s founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, have built a tremendous team that we are excited to welcome into the Google family,&amp;quot; Google CEO Larry Page said in a statement. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now\u2014thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe.&amp;quot;  In 2011, Nest Labs debuted the smart thermostat, which learned when to turn the temperature up or down. Two years later the Nest Protect, a smart smoke detector, followed in the company&amp;#039;s minimalist and borderline-fine-art design by co-founder Tony Fadell. In tech circles, Fadell is known by a different name\u2014&amp;quot;The father of the iPod&amp;quot;\u2014though he eventually parted ways with the company when he lost out to Scott Forstall over who would design Apple&amp;#039;s newest gadget, the iPhone.  &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re thrilled to join Google,&amp;quot; Fadell said in the press release. &amp;quot;With their support, Nest will be even better placed to build simple, thoughtful devices that make life easier at home, and that have a positive impact on the world.&amp;quot; So what does this mean for owners with sensitive data stored with Nest? A blog written by Fadell and sent to TechCrunch states that &amp;quot;Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest&amp;#039;s products and services. We&amp;#039;ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.&amp;quot; So it appears that Nest will continue to operate separately (at least somewhat) from its parent company. Nest is just Google&amp;#039;s latest big-ticket acquisition. The search engine sultan isn&amp;#039;t afraid to throw money around. In the summer of 2011, Google put down $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility, and only a few weeks ago it bought robotics company Boston Dynamics for an undisclosed amount. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/a9881/google-acquires-nest-for-32-billion-16376632/>