Google Just Bought Its Way Into Your Home

Hot on the heels of the Amazon's privacy nightmare of a phone, Google is reportedly acquiring Dropcam, a home-security company whose bestselling item is a video monitor. Dropcam's products will be folded into Nest Labs (another company bought by Google earlier this year), which makes "smart-home" products, like a thermostat that adjusts automatically as it gets to know the user's habits. Guys, welcome to the future: it's terrifying.

Only a few months ago, Google surprised the tech world by purchasing Titan Aerospace, an aeriel drone manufacturer everyone thought was on Zuckerberg's wish-list. Now, the conglomerate seems to have set its sites closer to home — Dropcam's motto is that "you should be able to drop in on anything, be it your child, your pet or your house, from anywhere." Which is another way of saying: goodbye, privacy.

It's not exactly clear yet how Dropcam — whose security camera is constantly the best selling item of its kind on Amazon — will be incorporated into Google. As it stands, Dropcam is being bought by Nest Lab for a cool $555 million, to become part of its home products. And Nest, at least according to Big Daddy Google, is operating (essentially) on its own; Nest's founder Matt Rogers was quick to remind the tech world of that. Said Rogers, according to TechCrunch:

Like Nest customer data, Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission. Nest has a paid-for business model and ads are not part of our strategy. In acquiring Dropcam, we’ll apply that same policy to Dropcam too.

Whether or not it really does stay independent of Google remains to be seen — after all, it makes sense for Dropcam's cloud feature to merge with Google's cloud feature. Added Rogers, on his own blog:

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. We’re sure this is going to be the start of something great for Nest, Dropcam, and most importantly you — our customers.

Hey, maybe people don't care about their privacy so much after all — we're pretty psyched to start using Amazon Fire.