"Nest" isn't a bust. "Post-Google" Nest is a bust. And the bigger issue is much, much bigger.

Google didn't acquire Nest to out of an altruistic desire to assist Nest to grow faster to fulfill their mission. Nest was acquired because Google was lazy and saw an opportunity to grow Google's revenue and data-base while at the same time getting a foothold in the nascent but exponentially growing IoT sector, instead of having to build something themselves and compete with Nest.

When I hear about the piles of cash that companies like Google and Apple are sitting on I often shudder to think of all the other "Nest" like companies out there that will be snatched up in the middle of a growth spurt like an organism infected with a virus that injects its own DNA in order to hijack the host organism's biological mechanisms in order to fulfill its own goal of self replication, often killing its host in the process.

Nest was born from Apple culture. The founders left Apple after having worked on the iPod and set out to build another beautiful product. They wanted to build something. And the culture that informed them to make this decision, to take this path, was essential in the manner in which it played out. Acquisitions such as this, that aren't merely hands-off capital injections, by definition change the culture, goals, and products of the company acquired.

So, companies, like Google and Apple, that have massive, massive stock-piles of cash have the luxury to, as a side-effect, at will, change the culture, goals, and products of just about any nascent company, and they most often do so for the purposes of furthering their bottom line, expanding their user base, and growing their data-base.

Everyone else (read: everyone that is not one of these handful of companies like Google and Apple) pays the price by losing out on all the beautiful things companies like Nest could have born into the world.

Because it's not just about products. Products are, in addition to being attempts to solve engineering problems, a piece of our culture, of our social technologies, of our shared experiences. Nest wasn't trying to "solve" thermostats. They wanted to improve the experience of being in your home, for many of us our most sacred or private space.

You can't "solve" everything, because not everything is a "problem".

People buy vases and then put them in the middle of a room with nothing to fill them, because they like the way it makes the space feel. There was no "vase" problem. And there is no "awkward silence between friends in a car ride" problem. That awkward silence is a miracle of a good relationship, when two people know, without saying anything, that something is being left unsaid, and that one of them has the chance to be brave and kind enough to, for the benefit of their friendship, make the unspoken spoken. But Spotify would like to suggest you play their "awkward silence" play-list.

Independent companies creating products they themselves want, and that they are not trying to push onto others, but that they'd love to share with the world, need to resist the urge to take that capital infusion or accept a buyout so they can have access to the network and infrastructure of some grand suitor. It's a deal with the devil almost every time.