Home automation company Nest Labs has recalled all of its internet-enabled smoke detectors due to a significant glitch.
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Nest, which was purchased by Google in January for $3.2 billion, explained a glitch which causes its smoke alarms to temporarily disable alerts when someone waves a limb near the device. The AP has the full report:
"Nest Labs is recalling 440,000 smoke alarms to fix a feature that could prevent the alarm from sounding immediately.
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"The Nest Protect Smoke + CO alarms have a feature that allows users to temporarily silence some alerts by waving their arm near the unit. The company is offering an electronic update to disable this feature. It has not received any related reports of incidents, injuries or property damage.
"The high-tech home monitoring device company, which was acquired this year by Google, halted all new sales of the alarms last month after recognizing the problem. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Wednesday that the recall applies to all of the Nest Protect Smoke + CO alarms."
Nest is also offering an internet update to remove the feature that turns the alerts off, though it seems unclear whether that would replace a recall. This may be a blow to Google's investment as the company might lose some face over these reports, but it doesn't seem to be anything serious as no incidents were reported--they both may escape relatively unscathed in terms of reputation.