Google bought Nest's talent not the thermostat and smoke detector...
I think Nest was under pressure from Honeywell's lawsuits and needed deep pockets to survive. Google may fade the thermostat and smoke detector in favor of other devices like Google Glass.
The entire Nest Team probably sold their souls to Google for the 3.2 Billon because it was either that or get crushed by Honeywell.
Time will tell.
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What got Nest purchased was 1.1 million homes sending their data up to Nest's Cloud. When Fadell talks about scaling the product he's talking about turning on my Nest products and gather more lucrative data. This data is Google's sweet nectar and potentially worth Billions.
If Google wanted IoT devices they could have purchased 20 companies for less money but most of these companies would have little to no dataset to start mining.
I don't think Nest was under pressure any kind of from Honeywell's lawsuit.