Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostats

The data they are collecting sounds useless. But it’s still ridiculous. “Internet connection for me but not for thee!”

If you're a little tech savvy, check out https://nolongerevil.com/. You can reflash the firmware of gen1/2 nests and it will no longer talk to Google but instead it talks to their open source control panel.

The good news from this article is that someone has figured out a way to reclaim your tech after Google remotely disabled it.