Google
acquired Nest Labs last year, bringing the Nest intelligent thermostat
to the search giant, and rumor has it they’re now working on a range of
hardware projects. A new site popped up today called “Google Nest”
claiming to be a collection of new products that focus on the user and
the home, but it’s actually an activist project designed to skewer some
of Google’s policies and practices.
The products listed include Google Trust, Google Hug, Google Bee and
Google Bye, and each lampoons some aspect of the intersection of
personal privacy and Google’s data gathering tendencies. Trust is free
insurance against misuse of personal data, whereby high payouts are
delivered to users for stuff like NSA accessing of records.
Google Hug is a hug-finding location-based social interaction tool.
It’s designed to compensate for the fact that people don’t interact in
person anymore. Google Bee is a so-called “personal drone,” which
“watches over your house and family when you are away.” Finally, Google
Bye takes things dark by building a post-mortem profile of a user by
collecting their information and then publishing it in its entirety when
someone expires.
Of course, as mentioned, none of these are real, but are instead parts of a project built by German activist organization Peng Collective.
The group’s stated mission is to “provoke gently” using humor, jam
culture and generally poke with subversive installations and art
campaigns.
Google Nest definitely fits in with that modus operand i, but I
definitely feel like it could be a bit more cutting if it were more
sharply tuned, but it does nail the branding and imagery. Also I’ll take
one of those data insurance policies right now, please.
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