Birds Of A Feather: Google’s Nest Welcomes Dropcam Video-Monitoring To The Flock

Following Google’s initial foray into the connected home front with the acquisition of Nest is an acquisition of Dropcam, a startup that makes a cloud-based WiFi video monitoring service. Rumors had emerged a few weeks ago that this was happening, but now the deal is going through for $555 million.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers confirmed that the company is paying cash for Dropcam. The deal will close pending regulatory approval.

There are, of course, concerns over any Google-owned products and services in the connected home because of the search giant’s ad-focused revenue stream, but Rogers assured that neither Nest nor Dropcam will sell ads, and both fall under Google’s privacy policy. Other concerns over the security of cloud-based video streams of people’s homes (despite the irony that Dropcam functions as a home security measure) are still valid.

That said, Dropcam offers quite a compelling set of services, and paired with Nest makes for a suddenly interesting spate of Internet of Things offerings from parent company Google.