Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by s3r3nity on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @08:50AM (#19207738)

I remember someone in a recent HN comment thread mentioning that, as an ex-Googler, Google today feels like Microsoft under Ballmer.

So while I agree with you, it _also_ wouldn't surprise me if someone raised the concern, but that person was on a different / more silo'ed team and therefore the concern never reached the execution stage. Herego too many management layers and/or nodes of entropy for communication.

But that's just a hypothesis.

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by balabaster on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @09:22AM (#19207971)

Or was "yes, yes, we'll add a story to the backlog to add it to the specs" and it just flat out got forgotten. I've seen this happen so many times where I've been the one to raise the issue and because I've passed it off, I've forgotten about it only to circle back around 2 months later when someone says "Oh, we need to do this" and I say "I raised this 2 months ago, I thought X had put it in the backlog."

And when you go looking, sure enough, there it is in the backlog down in Priority "We'll get to it when we get to it, after all these other more important things that needed to be completed by last week."

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by CodeSheikh on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @10:06AM (#19208351)

I am sorry but I do not buy this "added to backlog and forgot" theory, especially for a resources-packed company like Google. Are you implying that everyone from PM to devs to QA all ignored the microphone sitting in there? All electronics needs to be compliance tested at a gov labs in Northeast (Baltimore area) because of electromagnetic signature since Nest devices have WiFi. Are you saying even they forgot to bring it up as well?

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by balabaster on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @11:11AM (#19209016)

I'm not saying the microphone was ignored or forgotten about, I'm saying the "add that line to the specification sheet for public release" was forgotten about.

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by lrem on Thursday February 21, 2019 @03:55AM (#19215523)

I work in Google and my org of over a hundred engineers has a single tech writer assigned. I assure you she never sees the bottom of her backlog.

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by balabaster on Thursday February 21, 2019 @09:22AM (#19217029)

This is so common in so many companies I've worked with that it doesn't even begin to surprise me. This is an accepted way of life at most tech companies.

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by SpicyLemonZest on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @11:12AM (#19209023)

Sure, that seems plausible. If the existence of the microphone wasn't a secret internally, why would PM or devs or QA or government inspectors be disturbed to see it?

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by jamieson-becker on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @09:52AM (#19208219)

Although this is all possible and perhaps even more plausible than the alternative, it's still more fun and conspiratorial to view Google as the new Evil Empire, so I'll just keep doing that, thanks.

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Re:Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was n... by eitally on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @09:19AM (#19207944)

As a current googler, this seems like the most plausible explanation. Entirely likely that the person who noticed didn't actually know which other team to escalate to....

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