Homey sold to LG

So in the news here in the Netherlands: Homey just got sold to LG.
In local discussion fora, alot of users see this as a bad thing, and are already looking to jump ship.

If I may be so bold to sugest to @Hubitat_Staff : Run a targeted campain promoting Hubitat to Homey users.

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Not a bad idea. LG is very big on selling people's data.... That alone is going to be a huge turn off.

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Yeah, that is the most reply ppl give on the Homey forum.

Ring, Nest, SmartThings etc etc.
I'll give it three years before they kill Homey and make it an LG exclusive.

Hoping Hubitat will never sell-out to big-tech, as I love the product, and recommend it wherever I can.

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All of LGs efforts in the "connected devices" space have been unmitigated disasters for the customers - whether they met LGs internal goals or metrics and are viewed as 'successful' internally I can't know...

I don't see this going well for Homey users.

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Yep The Verge just posted this today:

I expect this to go as well as Samsung did with SmartThings. Homey has one this that SmartThings didn't have is that they are monetized via a subscription model to use the features of the device.

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Could we please have a moment of silence for any Homey users who don't own any LG appliances. :wink:

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Unfortunately the sad reality is this is the only end game that makes any financial sense in the long run. Let's just hope it is a responsible party like Microsoft instead of the other knuckleheads in the industry. It's just math based on installed user base and scale. Fortunately for us geeks this is likely a long way away.

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Give Homey a goldstar. Looks like they just got lucky.

P.S. If you get the joke, you're old. Like me.

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Not really.

That's only true if you are a corporate entity that always has to be "growing" in order to satiate shareholders. Many privately owned companies survive, and even thrive, by maintaining a stable and devoted base of customers.

The key there, though, is that they usually have to stay private, carry little to no debt, and have a small group of owners that are aligned on how much "enough" size and profit is.

On the flip side, what tends to kill those kind of businesses is when the small group of owner(s) retire or die off and new management buys into the "either you're growing or dying" nonsense.

Guess I'm old like you buddy. :slight_smile:

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Yup... old as dirt. And eventually the owners pass on one way or the other, and the successors seek how to make money... and well... you know the rest of the story.

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Unreal that they sold for an estimated $61 million!!

you are being quite generous. I give it about a year, two max. ThinQ is a mess, and everytime they refresh it , it juat keeps getting worse and worse.

Their phones were great. Still using my v60

What happens with Homey now makes me think about what may happen with Hubitat in the future.


Thats ridiculous!

Now, I am thinking about whether it is worth putting so much effort and time into community apps/drivers that may become proprietary to a greedy corporation?

Probably not.

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I think Google has more data on you than any of the smart home products cab gather.
Privacy was dead a long time ago.

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I am not concerned about privacy.

Homey became what it is now also thanks to community apps. I am monitoring it for quite a long time.

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Thinking back, that's got to be one of the most successful "re-branding" jobs in recent history. It really did step them up out of the low-ball-junk category...there might be some areas where credit is due.

But I wonder if you did a study of their entire product portfolio if you'd reach the conclusion that they made a bigger marketing image "step up" than quality "step up". I'm kinda thinking the "quality aspect" was from just being in a boat that rose with the same quality tide industry-wide and not something they achieved as an explicit design goal.

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...and four years before they get bored and kill it off.

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Speaking of Google, where does Matter fit in?

Fresh blood to smart home industry. Good..