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Nest co-founder, former Apple intern, and Nilay Patel's ALS Ice Bucket Challenge nominee, Matt Rogers was on hand at IFA 2014 to deliver one of the opening keynotes for the show. Announcing that the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect fire alarm are coming to the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, and France later this month, Rogers also took some time to detail the company's founding principles. Among them is the belief that Nest is a guest in every customer's home and it must respect and maintain the trust shown with every purchase.
You don't have to connect your Nest thermostat to the internet or to any other devices capable of communicating with it if you don't want to. You'll get less functionality, but you can effectively ring-fence your private information within your home. Should you choose to share your data with Nest for its enhanced analytics and the like, Rogers says that it will never be sold on to any third parties. That doesn't entirely quell fears about Nest becoming a syphon of information for parent company Google to exploit, but Rogers is unequivocal in saying that his company's business is to sell and make good products rather than facilitate more targeted ads:
"We don't sell ads, we sell products."
