Some Google Home Speakers are downloading hundreds of gigs of data for no reason

TL;DR

  • According to user reports, Google Home Speakers are downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data for no reason.
  • Some users have shared screenshots showing their speakers downloading over 3TB of data in 30 days.
  • Google has reportedly acknowledged the issue and has said that a fix is already rolling out.

Smart speakers keep themselves updated by automatically downloading firmware updates in the background. However, this ability to quietly download data in the background can also become a problem, as we’re now seeing with the new Google Home Speakers.

According to several users on Reddit, the new Google Home speaker has been absolutely hogging data in the background. Some users say their speakers downloaded nearly 140GB of data overnight, with no clear reason for it. Another user shared a screenshot of their internet statistics showing that their three new Google Home speakers downloaded around 280GB of data (see the first image below).