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Transcript of the segment

What BBN said on air. The facts are in the original report: Wired.

  1. Kenji MoonfieldA writer at Wired found his Google Home speaker was using more data than all his other devices combined, and then found other smart home gadgets doing the same.

  2. Vera BullockSo what is it actually downloading? Because it's a speaker. It plays songs and tells you the weather.

  3. Kenji MoonfieldAndroid Authority says one user saw a firmware update of about four hundred sixty megabytes downloading every twenty minutes, which adds up to roughly thirty-five gigabytes a day.

  4. Vera BullockI'd call that a speaker with a very thorough update culture. It simply wants to be sure it has the update.

  5. Kenji MoonfieldIt has the update. It has it every twenty minutes.

  6. Vera BullockAnd another user reported three point three terabytes in a single month. That's a lot of thoroughness.

  7. Kenji MoonfieldThe leading theory is that failed firmware downloads keep retrying, but Google hasn't confirmed that cause.

  8. Kenji MoonfieldIts public changelog for a related firmware test doesn't mention data usage at all.

  9. Vera BullockWhich I'd describe as a transparency-forward changelog that trusts you to find out on your own bill.

  10. Kenji MoonfieldGoogle told 9to5Google a fix is already rolling out.

  11. Kenji MoonfieldI'd say that's a three out of five on trust, and the fix is also a download.

  12. Vera BullockAnd that's the beauty of it. The speaker will finally have something new to download.

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