"Is it really just an internet connected microphone with absolutely zero on board processing capability? If that's the case then they deserve every bit of headache and pain that miscellaneous audio sources can inflict upon them and that applies equally to both Google and it's customer lackeys."
Come on - this isn't the Daily Mail - you are on IT site here, you know perfectly well that it is simply not feasible that it sits streaming everything you say 24/7 back to Google. Aside from the fact that this thing will have been taken apart by someone, someone else probably has serial access to one. At least 100 people will have run Wireshark to see who it is talking to and when. And then finally - it may only be voice - but it would still add a massive amount of bandwidth use to your monthly internet usage which would of been questioned countless times by now.
It works like every other device of it's kind - including Siri and any other always listening bit of software. It wakes up when it hears the phrase it has been programmed to wait for - and at that point it starts sending the microphone stream off to whichever company is processing the stream.
As for the countless people saying if you could change the phrase it would all be solved - you are wrong, and for this - I point to what happened when we asked people to come up with passwords. Google Home, Echo and whatever comes next are designed for normal people - not IT professionals. Normal people will either name it "Computer" or the name of someone they know / knew. The number of false triggerings would skyrocket. This is something many tech bloggers have touched upon - that while it's not quite as natural having to say "OK Google" it is 4 syllables and therefore has a lot less accidental triggerings compared to "Alexa" which gets false triggered a lot and "Siri" which if it was in a proper bit of hardware with a special microphone array making the device extremely sensitive - would be triggered ALL THE TIME because it's such a short word - and you know there is a not a chance in hell Apple would ever let you be able to customise that - because - they don't let you customise anything else either.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
