I wouldn't phrase it so negatively but I do share the same sentiment. I think this is the craziness that seems to be so widespread that people don't notice how crazy it is - the primary way for two devices sitting few meters from each other to communicate should not be routing packets around half of the planet. I get it's easier, but it's bad engineering, unnecessarily wasteful energy-wise and I bet the only reason this is the default is for companies to lock people down and make money on data.

"unnecessarily wasteful energy-wise"

This is just for setup right? So the energy cost is insanely trivial, hardly worth mentioning.

I'm making a general point here. In case of this router, one-time expense is indeed hardly worth mentioning. I just dislike the whole trend.

The general point is "local direct communication is hard and unreliable". Your phone falls back to 3G - connection broken. You're on "HouseWifi" and the other device is on "HouseWifi_5Ghz" - connection broken. You have a router with a guest mode and stops guests accessing the local LAN - guest can't print or chromecast or whatever.

Totally agree.

This then assumes that authentication is handled by some combination of device proximity, physically pushing a "grant admin access" button on the device, or falling back to password management (possibly on a sticker on the bottom of the device).

There is something to be said for tying the device into an existing strong authentication infrastructure.

It allows configuring while not near it too, to check what's wrong with it while at the office. Bluetooth doesn't extend that far.

If you can debug the device remotely, you can debug the device remotely without trusting a third party.

There's absolutely no reason your private home router should be a slave to whatever remote configuration, monitoring, or intercept that some third party may be under legal orders to implement.

IMO these devices are nothing but parasites. On the positive side, Google has no track record with selling this kind of device and hopefully they will fail badly at it.

Google Fiber is one of the most wanted things in the tech world. You think having your traffic go through their router is bad? I don't even want to know how you'd feel about every internet thing you do being on their network.

There is a significant difference between being the first hop after the firewall, and the firewall actual.

I'd say Google has done amazingly well with selling at least one device like this, the Chromecast.

Maybe I'm over-stating the similarities, or the actual success.