Dead to me: Apple’s Schiller ‘unfollows’ Tony Fadell and Nest after Google acquisition

“Only a few days after ‘father of the iPod’ Tony Fadell agreed to sell thermostat and smoke detector maker Nest to Google for north of three billion dollars, Apple senior vice president (and former Fadell colleague) Phil Schiller has unfollowed the Nest CEO and the Nest company on Twitter,” Mark Gurman reports for 9to5Mac.

“As the protector of Apple’s brand, Schiller’s unfollowing of Fadell and Nest is perhaps unsurprising,” Gurman reports. “With the Nest deal, a source says that Google will gain approximately 200 former Apple employees.”

“The majority of Nest employees worked at Apple over the course of their careers, with many being involved in high-profile projects like the iPod, iPad, and iPhone,” Gurman reports. “The design of the Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect have also been compared to the designs of Apple products, so the fact that Nest’s products are now under the umbrella of Apple’s fiercest competitor may not be a pleasing sight for Apple’s marketing head.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: We never followed Tony or Nest Labs, but we are replacing our Nest thermostats with fuller featured, far more reliable Honeywell devices.

A lot has been made of Google getting former Apple employees with their wild overpayment for Nest Labs. However, if Apple really wanted and valued these employees, they’d still be at Apple.