Google Home Speaker bug burns through data; fix rolling out
Some new Google Home Speakers are downloading hundreds of gigabytes in the background, likely due to failed firmware updates. Google says a fix is rolling out.
LandGadget Newsroom · · 2 min read
A smart speaker that quietly downloads 200 GB a day is more than an annoyance on a capped plan. It's a reminder to check what your devices do on your network.
What happened. Over the past week, owners of Google's new Google Home Speaker have reported the device downloading huge amounts of data in the background. 9to5Google found that one of its own speakers, unused for voice or music for a full day, pulled 17 GB in 24 hours, including almost 10 GB in a single burst at 3 a.m. Pacific time. The same unit downloaded 41 GB on 13 October and 132 GB over 30 days, 9to5Google reports. One Reddit user said his speaker was consuming more than 200 GB a day, The Verge notes.
Why. The timing points to the speaker repeatedly failing to download or install a firmware update and starting again. Google hasn't explained the cause, but it told 9to5Google that "a fix is already rolling out that should address this for users." The reports centre on the new Home Speaker. 9to5Google didn't see the problem on other Nest devices, including Nest Hubs in the same house, and a second Home Speaker in another home used just 2 GB in a month.
How to check yours. Most routers can show data use per device. On Nest Wifi, open the Google Home app, go to the Wifi tab, then Devices, pick your speaker and view the 1-, 7- or 30-day usage graphs. If the numbers look wildly high and you're on a capped or mobile broadband plan, unplug the speaker until the fix reaches it.
Our take. This is a bug, not a privacy scandal: the data is flowing to the speaker, not out of your home. Still, it's a fair warning. Smart home gadgets update themselves silently, and on a home connection with a data cap a single faulty device can do real damage. Google has been testing new firmware for its older speakers too, so updates are clearly busy right now. A good router or mesh Wi‑Fi system with per-device stats makes problems like this easy to spot. Choosing devices that work locally over Matter and Thread also reduces how much your home depends on the cloud.
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