Wow. That's pretty huge news. My primary complaint about the Nest was that it was a completely isolated automation product. It was a thermostat, and it wouldn't interact with any other home automation systems. It made no sense at all to me to have to use separate apps for each automation product in your home. Clearly they're trying to expand into a whole-home system, so that addresses that concern.

The second biggest issue I had with Nest was that aside from remote control and phone apps, I wouldn't have been able to use any of the features that make the product compelling simply for the fact that our thermostat is in a location that nobody ever walks past, so the motion-activated features would be useless. If they can make their smoke detectors act as remote motion sensors, that would be fantastic. However, I question the usefulness of smoke detectors as remote temperature sensors. I want a temp sensor to be lower in the room, not on the ceiling. But it's better than nothing.

The one issue I have with the way Nest does things that I'm not sure they can address is the issue of non-standard schedules. My wife has a 9-5 job, yes, but I do not. I work out of my home, and there is absolutely no set schedule for when I'm in and out of my house. That makes the learning aspect of the system useless, IMO.

I still have BIG questions about this new direction for Nest. The first one is: whole the heck is Control4? I don't know why, but I've never heard of them in all the time I've been into home automation. Perhaps it's because it appears they only work through authorized dealers. Ugh. So I'm guessing it's a proprietary system. How does that work with the API they're releasing? Are they going to integrate with more systems than just Control4? I have a lot of questions about this...