Google’s Nest just got a little more crowded.
In a blog post Friday, Nest, the company famous for its intelligent thermostats and smoke alarms, announced it had purchased Dropcam, a home security startup, for a whopping $555 million.
Dropcam, a home-monitoring startup, makes small, simple cameras that you can play anywhere in your home. The cameras can send recorded footage to the cloud for viewing anywhere, so you can monitor your home from your mobile device. Dropcam’s cameras can also be used for video calling.
As Google moves into the connected devices sphere, the company’s activity tracking of its users raises privacy concerns. Dropcam, as well as Nest, have both agreed to keep all data gathered from their services away from Google. “Nest cares as much about customers, privacy and product experiences as we do,” said Greg Duffy, cofounder of Dropcam, on the company’s blog.
Dropcam comes as the latest acquisition made by Google. More recently, Google purchased Skybox Imaging, a satellite imaging company that is able to use its photos to track events in real-time, useful for surveying an area for changes.