GoKawiil
Tech News
Google Home Speaker owners reported their devices consuming unusually large amounts of Wi-Fi data, with one user citing three terabytes over two weeks and a WIRED writer finding her own speaker had used 487 GB in ten days. Google told WIRED a server misconfiguration caused some speakers to repeatedly re-download a software update, and said the issue has now been fixed.
Some Google Home Speaker owners report their devices continuously downloading massive amounts of data in the background, with one user seeing over 200GB consumed in a single day. The issue, flagged by 9to5Google and Reddit users, appears linked to a failed firmware update and mostly affects the newer Home Speaker model. Google has confirmed the bug and says a fix is already rolling out.
A comparison of major apps found that video streaming services like YouTube, Netflix and Prime Video consume the most mobile data, with usage climbing sharply at higher resolutions—YouTube alone can burn through over 15GB per hour at 4K. Video calling apps such as Zoom use less per hour overall, though group calls increase consumption because separate audio and video streams are downloaded for each participant.