The Wired article says:
Quote:

Though Fadell isn’t specific, he says that the company may offer more services, perhaps ones that bring more money to Nest. For the long-term, Nest plans to move beyond thermostats and exploit similar green opportunities in the way that only a tech company can. This particularly excites Nest’s investors.


Given that these are former Apple people, you know they've got apps on the brain. The big question is whether they just expose an API or whether they try to create an "ecosystem" that they control. It's easy to see a variety of sophisticated uses.

My guess is that somebody like Honeywell offers them a scandalously large amount of money and they promptly get sucked in.