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Google Nest camera ownership timeline and price increases

why now?

Google wants to raise the price by 2-3x annually so I thought I’d take stock

history:

2018

I bought a Nest camera on amazon in September 2018 for £162

My email history shows me at the time subscribing to “Nest aware” on November 1st (after a free trial) at £40/year for 5-day (24/7) video history

2019

It renewed at £40/year in 2019 with the same benefit

2022

I’m missing a couple of years of history, but in 2022, I can see that google had taken over collecting payments, and were charging me £100/year for 60 days of events and 10 days of 24/7 history:

2023

£100/year again in 2023.

The camera stopped working around here and I replaced it. 5 years is not -terrible- innings for something exposed to the elements. Paid another £169 for basically the same thing but with a battery in it (which makes no diff as I’ve got it wired in)

Email 2023-09-01: We are putting the price up to £120/year:

2024

Then nest aware became part of google one, which I was forced or encouraged to join in March 2024 by a broken payment system, in order to continue having a functioning camera

so i got back to paying about £80/year which revoked the 60 days of history and 10 days of 24/7 I don’t recall what the 24/7 cost here, but it was evidently more than I was willing to pay.

2025

My next payment is showing as an upcoming £80/year in march

but today (2025-10-03) I received an email telling me they were revoking the only thing i subbed for as at Oct 2026:

 As a Premium Google One member, you are currently receiving Home Premium and Fitbit Premium as part of your plan. These benefits will no longer be offered with your Premium plan effective October 1st, 2026.

Here is what this means for you:

    As long as your existing Premium Google One subscription remains active, you can continue to enjoy Home Premium and Fitbit Premium as part of your plan until October 1st, 2026
    On October 1st, 2026 the benefit will be removed from your plan and any remaining Home Premium Advanced add-on credit (if applicable) will be refunded
    To help with the transition, we are offering a special 50% discount on our Google AI Pro plan for 1 year, an upgraded plan which includes Home Premium and Fitbit Premium, plus Google AI features

subscriptions now:

So I went to inspect the damage - the nest/home/whatever bit is missing now from the benefits of this subscription altogether

The current standard home subscription (Google home premium standard) just gives you clips where it detects something, rather than the 24/7 history.

It has NEVER been particularly good at this, and hasn’t really come along at all in the near-10-years I’ve had the camera and an active subscription. Given that that processing all occurs server side, friends, if you’re selling a device with a subscription and the cloud based elements don’t improve with time… where else could the benefits be for anyone who isn’t a shareholder I wonder

What we’re after is the advanced (Google home premium advanced) subscription, to see why something randomly appeared in frame when it doesn’t pick things up.

I had an initial rummage for the cheapest subscription they offer with the advanced plan, and initially only found it available on none of these annual prices: £190 £200 £480 £960 £1440 but rather, according to their desktop site, you have to subscribe to GOOGLE AI ULTRA 30TB for (after the bargain first three months half price): £2446/year

Cost overview

Over the 7 years i’ve owned the device, I’ve spent:

totalling £600 on subscription and £331 on devices

Conclusion for the moment:

I have found an option with the 2TB subscription, for £228/year for what is equivalent to my £80 To get the 24/7 stuff, tack on another £96/year for the advanced features.

This puts you at a min of £324/year for feature parity with what was originally £40/year in 2018.

I’ve just cancelled altogether, and have now about 5 months on the clock to set up my own re-streaming or IP system but I do feel terrible for those who would be less willing to try and do so themselves. Doubling/Tripling the price of a subscription for a physical object while also degrading the subscription to bump people up tiers is a bit much

#hardware