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Cable veteran Marwan Fawaz brought in to drive momentum at Google’s stuttering smart home unit.

Nest CEO Tony Fadell announced late last week that he is leaving the Google-owned company he co-founded so he can pursue new opportunities.

Marwan Fawaz, who once served as CTO of cableco Charter Communications and led Motorola’s connected home products division before joining alarm maker ADT, will take over.

"Marwan’s extensive technology and engineering knowledge, his experience with global service providers, as well as his background in connected home platforms will be valuable in continuing our trajectory, especially in scaling the business, working with our partners, and supporting out enterprise channels," said Fadell, in a blog post on Friday.

Fadell will serve as an advisor at Google, including to Google co-founder Larry Page.

"This will give me the time and flexibility to pursue new opportunities to create and disrupt other industries – and to support others who want to do the same – just as we’ve done at Nest," Fadell said.

Fadell, one of the original inventors of the iPod, co-founded Nest in 2010 with fellow Apple engineer Matt Rogers, launching a smart thermostat and a smoke/carbon monoxide alarm.

In 2014, Google, which at the time was struggling to crack the connected home market, bought Nest for US$3.2 billion (€2.82 billion).

Google had already been involved with Nest’s development years before the acquisition: its venture capital arm led Nest’s series B funding round in 2011, and its series C funding in 2012.

"We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship," said Fadell of the Google deal.

While it is true that Nest has expanded its reach to new markets and enjoyed surging revenue growth, it was also expected to be at the vanguard of Google parent Alphabet’s smart home strategy, but that has not been the case.

When Google unveiled its smart speaker, Google Home, in May, it was introduced by Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of product management and head of the team that created the Chromecast TV stick. Nest compatibility was mentioned in passing as a promised feature.

Furthermore, while Nest has updated its hardware and software portfolio, it has not added to it since acquiring Dropcam, a maker of WiFi-enabled home surveillance cameras, shortly after the Google deal.

According to a report by The Information in March, current and former Nest employees feel that the company has stalled, with some of the blame levelled at Fadell’s fastidious management style.

It will be down to Fawaz to inject fresh momentum.

"I have no doubt that the company will continue to flourish under his guidance and [I] can’t wait to see the innovations currently in development brought to market," said Fadell.
 

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