Tony Fadell said it was his idea to leave the maker of digital versions of thermostats, smoke detectors and other common household products.
Source: Nest Leader and Co-Founder Leaving After 6 Years at Helm – The New York Times
Mitch’s Quick Take: Having known Tony since he was a young engineer at General Magic, I think Google never found a way to harness his talents. He says in the article that he is in at the beginning of a lot of projects, however the Nest acquisition never gave the impression it was intended to explode old approaches to search at Google. There was a vast opportunity to grab in-home share.