Some Google Home speakers are downloading hundreds of gigabytes repeatedly
What's the story
Some owners of Google Home Speakers have reported a strange issue where their devices are downloading hundreds of gigabytes worth of data in the background. The problem, reported by 9to5Google and several Reddit users, could be linked to a failed firmware update installation process on the speakers. One Reddit user even found their device was using more than 200GB per day due to this bug.
Company response
Google is aware of the issue
Google has acknowledged the issue and said that "a fix is already rolling out that should address this for users."
The problem appears to be mostly linked with the new model of Google Home Speaker, but its exact prevalence is still unclear.
Discrepancy
Data usage varies widely across devices
The data consumption due to this bug varies from device to device.
One Home Speaker in a different household downloaded just 2GB in the past month, while an affected device used 132GB over the same period.
This discrepancy raises concerns for users with limited data plans, as they could unknowingly exhaust their quota if they don't regularly monitor their devices' data usage.