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Nest expands the Smart Home with $555 million Dropcam buy

Smart Home company Nest will look to expand into IP cameras with Dropcam purchase

Nest Labs, the company behind the Nest Smart Thermostat and Nest Protect smoke detector, has purchased Dropcam for $555 million – expanding its Smart Home range into home security and monitoring to keep an eye on your house when you’re out and about.

Dropcam is one of the newest IP camera manufacturers on the market, specialising in ease of use and simple setup. Unlike traditional IP cameras, which can often be a nightmare to get connected, Dropcam products connect to your local Wi-Fi network and set up themselves, broadcasting a video feed over the internet onto your smartphone or tablet.

In an official announcement on the Nest blog, head of engineering Matt Rogers said the company “spent a lot of time looking at camera companies and technologies around the world” before deciding to buy Dropcam. “I can say without a doubt, Dropcam has the best products, services, and customer experience in the business.

Eventually, the plan is for us to work together to reinvent products that will help shape the future of the conscious home and bring our shared vision to more and more people around the world. For now though, not much will change.” While the deal is being finalised, Dropcam products will remain on sale online and in stores, and existing customers will continue to use their Dropcam accounts.

It’s unclear whether the Dropcam brand will eventually be dropped in favour of Nest, but for the time being the company has pledged to carry over its existing privacy policy to Dropcam customers – meaning their data won’t be shared with parent company Google.

Nest is quickly growing into Google’s Smart Home subsidiary, after it was purchased by the search giant back in January for a massive $3.2 billion. With Google I/O due to kick off later today, it’s possible we’ll hear more about the acquisition during the keynote presentation tonight.

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