Does this work if you are sleeping in bed with a partner?

Yes. It can even tell you when you're snoring (instead of your partner).

Skeptical it can glean all of that without EEG, let alone without heart rate.

Check out some details in the second blog link.

Of course a sleep clinic with a lot of sensors will give you much better results.

The analogy would be a massage chair vs masseuse. Different price/convenience tradeoffs.

Heart rate can be discerned remotely using infrared cameras [1] so that would be doable.

[1] https://www.thinkmind.org/articles/smart_2017_2_20_48002.pdf

That tells Google about your sleep patterns (and more) which in my opinion is a no-go. This type of data should only be shared on a consensual basis and only with those who use it for your benefit or (truly anonymised) fit research purposes. Building a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes is not for your benefit. The same is true for other "connected, individualized" devices like Apple's iThings and others.

> Building a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes is not for your benefit.

"Your sleep data is handled responsibly. Your coughing and snoring sound data doesn't leave the Nest Hub, only sounds events are sent to Google servers. Consistent with our commitment to privacy in the home, your sleep data is not used for ad personalization."

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9415830

And going further:

"This also includes answering clearly if your home sensor data sent to Google is used to show you ads. And so we commit to you that for all our connected home devices and services, we will keep your video footage, audio recordings, and home environment sensor readings separate from advertising, and we won’t use this data for ad personalization. When you interact with your Assistant, we may use those interactions to inform your interests for ad personalization. For example, if you ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” we may use the text of that voice interaction (but not the audio recording itself) to show you personalized ads."

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9849262

> For example, if you ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” we may use the text of that voice interaction (but not the audio recording itself) to show you personalized ads."

That is to say, they use sound data - in processed, not raw form - to build a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes not for your benefit. That's on top of interns listening to some of the audio to ensure the service works as expected, that is to say recordings of you having sex will be passed around the office.

OK, I think you didn't understand the whole statement or are twisting it to meet your narrative. It sounds like you have an axe to grind, so I won't really go further.

For others, your answer is available at https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10176224. I suggest people read the privacy policy themselves.

If I untangled it right it reads:

“the data from the sensors don’t leave the device. Instead we extract events and interactions from this data and send back home to do whatever we wish with it.”

The policy you link makes statements about “hey Google” but for me it’s still very unclear what apply to this sentence vs others it records. May be my far from perfect english understanding.