I'm not sure I want another listening device in my home. Seems like a direct pipe to the NSA to me.

It's bad enough everything is top 3-5 results in search advertising. Now everything is winner take all.

Me: Google, I'd like some Chinese...

Google: No Problem, I'll order some shitty food from the place that paid me the most...

Not necessarily the NSA, but I don't particular trust either Google, or especially Facebook if they launched something like this, to not be listening to ad-related keywords.

It only sends info to Google's servers after hearing the "hot word" but sure, it more than likely will analyze your requests in a similar fashion to the requests you type into the search box on your browser. Worth noting as this may or may not be a dealbreaker depending on your personal choices/concerns.

> may not be a dealbreaker depending on your personal choices/concerns.

How is it not a dealbreaker that companies like Google and Facebook are destroying internet privacy and undermine the whole foundations of democracy. If I visit a friend I would require him to tell me if my speech is being recorded by google or anyone else that he is aware of, privacy is a matter of dignity and will always be the cornerstone of human rights, it's not a matter of personal choices/concerns it's a fundamental concern of how we want our society to be.

Did you just miss the "It only sends info to Google's servers after hearing the 'hot word'" part?

It's not like these devices are open microphones pushing data to Amazon/Google/Microsoft. They use onboard processing to detect their personal wake words and then stream your audio until a defined audio gap. That is then processed into text and kicks off the automated routines. Do they analyze this for ad-related keywords? Perhaps (Probably), but that is a different argument that is valid vs. an invalid argument that it's always streaming.

> Did you just miss the "It only sends info to Google's servers after hearing the 'hot word'" part?

And where's the guarantee of that? Can we see the code? Can we turn off the microphones in hardware?

Just like every laptop/phone/tablet has a built-in microphone and we can't turn it off either.

All it takes is for Apple/Microsoft/Google/Amazon to push a system update, and, voila~~~

Skynet listens to all.

If Google were generally thought to have shitty top search results from the place that paid them the most, this criticism would make sense.

Have you used Google search in the last five years? Sure, 'shitty' is relative but the results are heavily weighted for the top payers. People continue using them for search because the alternatives are worse. If looking to buy something online, just skip G and go straight to Amazon as thwy will dominate the top results because....

*Ixquick, Startpage & DDG mitigate tracking but still utilize Goog's weighted results.

So Google is shit, but it's ok when used through DDG?

I could have used a * placed after "Google search" in post body. Did not intend to imply DDG,et al. get better results, was an aside stating they are not. I ended main body of post implying Amazon's results are significantly weighted by advertising revenues paid to Google.