Ex-Apple Employee Tony Fadell Explains Why He Sold His Company To Google For $3.2 Billion

Tony Fadell, the CEO of smart thermostat and smoke detector company Nest, sold his company to Google today for $3.2 billion.

Fadell is most famous for helping create the original iPod. He left Apple after shortly before the iPhone project kicked into high gear under then-vice president Scott Forstall.

Fadell is going on a media tour today, doing interviews about his move to Google. Remember: Nest's long-term goal is to connect everything in your home to the Internet.

Here's what Fadell told The Verge:

For me, this isn't about a financial transaction. It's about the future and what we can do together, so I'm really excited about taking the vision. Because they really like the vision that we have and the product roadmap that we have and they can implement it. They're going to allow us to - Nest can remain Nest. We need more capital, we always do, but when we have somebody who really understands the vision, it's like, go.

And here's an excerpt from his interview with tech news site Re/Code:

The crux of this is that we thought about what is it going to take to realize our vision and change the world? This is not a typical you-can-add-servers-to-it business, then it scales. There is a ton of infrastructure that needs to be built. We want to differentiate with our products and not spend our time rebuilding stuff other people have. If we did not focus on the products, that is where you get into trouble. But you have to build the infrastructure - it's not like like you go off a shelf and buy it.