Was the Google Home Speaker Worth the Wait? - DTNS 5296

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2:20This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, June 24th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand.

2:29Sarah Lane: Today, Google's anticipated home speaker with Gemini is out, but was it worth the wait? Was it worth the wait for this cherry bomb that I have right here? That's right, I've got it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Sarah Lane. We're going to start with what you need to know with a big story.

2:49yeah so okay the google home speaker it kind of looks like a red baseball in my hand or softball or something it's actually quite pretty um this was first announced smaller than the echo studio

3:02Sarah Lane: which i've got going on but okay so similar in general oh yeah oh totally yeah except the echo studio looks like an actual circle like a uh what uh why am i suddenly blanking sphere circle sphere there we go that's the better word it's been a day let me just say that sphere whereas this has kind of like a flat top it's like it was a sphere then they kind of squished it a little bit it's a squishy apple yeah but it is quite nice looking uh this was first announced last year at the made by google event that was fall so a while ago it kind of seemed like it was going to be coming very soon and then there were some delays and then finally they were like yeah by summer and then here we are it's summer and what do you know here it is so i've had this for a little more than a week i i don't feel like it's enough to give like an exhaustive full review but i can give you like a mini review because i've definitely been using it and i definitely have thoughts and i'm also curious to hear from you sarah kind of how you feel about this whole like home speaker thing because a part of well i i have thoughts time has passed on it yeah so okay well Well, design-wise, I think right off the top, it's impossible to see this and not immediately think of the design because it is quite – in my eyes, it's quite catching.

4:19It's got that fabric lining similar to what you were showing with the Echo, similar to the older version, which, by the way, they haven't updated these speakers since 2020. So it's been a while since the Nest Mini got an upgrade. So it's not a better auditory experience.

4:36Sarah Lane: It's just a better, I don't know, hardware experience? Well, it is definitely better on the sound side because they're able to fit larger drivers in here. So it was a 40 millimeter driver, I think, on the Mini. Here you've got a 58 millimeter. So you do have a better sound out of this. Certainly notice a difference between the two. At the same time, it's not big enough to give you nice resonating bass response. the upper, you know, kind of like the upper frequency stuff. If you're listening to music on here, it's not quite hi-fi. Let's just say that it's still kind of has a bit of a papery kind of like consumer audio quality to it.

5:20You're not going to get this and have no need to have high fidelity speakers if you're a huge music fan, but things do sound better if you're comparing it. So I think that's an upgrade. I kind of would have liked for them to be a little better than they are. I do like that you can pair these very easily with, I have the Google TV streamer. And so it was super easy. One day I turned on my streamer and it was like, it recognized that this was on the network. It was like, oh, do you want to pair with that speaker? I was like, well, I guess sure. Cause it's so easy. And boop, it did. Suddenly all of my TV audio was going through this single speaker, which as you can imagine at a certain point, I was like, okay, well that's neat, but that's not how I prefer to hear it.

6:02If I had two of these, that would be a different story. Maybe pair them together in stereo pair and you could replace maybe like a sound bar. But again, sound quality could be better. So there's that.

6:14Sarah Lane: And I noticed this is red, which is just one color preference that you have options with. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a jade color that's like a light kind of greenish hue. And then there's like a black and a whitish, but it's not pure white. It's kind of like a light gray sort of hue. So there's four different colors. I kind of love how smart speakers for the home these days do come in more bold colors. I mean, I am very much either like black or white speaker because I want it to just blend in with wherever corner it's going into type thing. But it's kind of fun. It's kind of fun to have the colors.

7:00No, it is. And like where I had this in our living room on like a glass kind of tabletop next to a lamp or whatever. And it really did kind of blend in like it looked pleasant in there. It's kind of a colorful wall, you know, that it was sitting in front of. So the accent, you know, from a design perspective, sometimes when they do this, it doesn't look as much like a piece of technology. And I guess that's a good thing. It's not just yet another black piece of tech that's like hidden off in the corner. You don't mind it being out in the open.

7:35Sarah Lane: So you've got it in the living room, kind of off the side from the TV. How does it plug in? And, you know, what do you need? Yeah, well, I mean, this is one downside, I would say. Usually on the previous models, you had a removable cable and it would house into the device itself. Here it's pre-installed. So the cable goes right into the speaker itself. It is USB-C on the other end and it does come with a brick. So, you know, that is unpluggable. But you can't remove it from the speaker itself, which I don't know. I would rather have it removable than not versus it being kind of baked in. I couldn't even tell you exactly why.

8:20I just think maybe it's more durable, but maybe it's not. And does it really – over time, you're going to plug this in and it's just going to stay there anyways. So it's probably not that big a deal, but I was kind of bummed to see that.

8:31Sarah Lane: Yeah. That's – it's an interesting point because I don't really know why it would matter to me either. But there's something about being able to, I don't know, keep your cables in order on your own. I guess so. Yeah. Or if this – I guess the thing that I get concerned with is these cables are not always indefinite. At some point, it might crinkle. It might lose its signal. And at least with the removable, I can swap it out. But because this is baked in, you're kind of – well, you're locked in. to that cable and uh there doesn't look like it would be very easy to replace it let's just say that so um one thing i didn't mention there is a led kind of like ring around the bottom uh which is really nice especially because i had it on like a glass table and so it like shined this colorful light when you're talking to gemini and stuff it gives you this animation in a dark room it looks really cool so you know little splashes like that i think though gemini is is what google is really kind of leaning into here.

9:41They're saying like, hey, this is a Gemini first device. You're going to love it if you're all in on Gemini and stuff. And I mean, I don't know. These devices used to be powered by Assistant. Then we've had this really uncomfortable couple of years where Google's been transitioning away from Assistant capabilities into Gemini. And thankfully, at this point, a lot of those things that it used to be able to do, it can do now. but it's still very finicky in the way that all like chatbots can be finicky right like they can do the thing most of the time but then that sometime they don't do it and so like what's what's an example of like a finicky thing where you're just like why interacting with your smart home um which is one of the things that they really are supposed to be really good at with this is like you know most of the time it'll it'll turn off that light or it might control your TV or whatever.

10:32But every once in a while, you do the thing you usually do, and it doesn't do it for some strange random reason. And you have to think creatively on how you ask it again, or reset it or whatever. I mean, just little things like that. They aren't the end of the world, but when they happen, it's just kind of like, haven't we solved this at this point?

10:51Sarah Lane: And now, is everything like smart home in your house, Google Home? any of the speakers that yes uh the speaker wise we've got these you know the the older versions of these in every room we've got hue light bulbs you know that that does connect into uh google home now so you can do um certain controls there yeah we've we've got some of the a lot of um smart home devices that do kind of wire uh wirelessly wire well because i guess i was asking because i was like well what if you have you know some sort of variety of like amazon home home kit, Google home, you know, cause I know that can get kind of wily, um, in my experience, but yeah, if everything's Google in your house, um, the speaker should be better.

11:36Sarah Lane: Yeah. I mean, I would say at the end of the day, like it's, is it an upgrade from what they had before? Sure. Better sound. It's a little larger. It's a little louder. It's prettier. Um, sure. it does Gemini and there's deeper Gemini home integration if you're paying which for like that extra level which I'm not I don't have Nest cameras but apparently you can get like contextual summaries of what happened in your camera sent to your speaker I don't have that so I couldn't test it but a lot of what I've seen with Gemini and these devices I've already seen with my other devices and so largely it's kind of doing the same thing here and I think the big question I have about these is, has the home speaker fad kind of passed by?

12:24Have people kind of already done that? And I've kind of moved on from home speakers a little bit in my room. I use it for very specific things. I don't use it for the just talk to the speaker in the corner thing anymore, the way I tried when it was new with Assistant. And I wonder if it's the same for other people too.

12:43Sarah Lane: Well, if you have thoughts, let us know. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We want to take a moment to thank all of you for supporting us because we could not do the show without you. DTNS is made possible by all of you listening and some of you watching as well. Thanks today to Tim Deputy, Brandon Brooks, Johnny Hernandez, and Damian Maris. Thank you.

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17:17All right. We got some big news to talk about here at the top of the briefs.

17:22Sarah Lane: Let's dive in. Let's do it. So Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto 6, the highly anticipated and highly delayed sequel that comes 13 years after the last release, will cost$80 and release on November 19th. That's what they're saying. So let's just assume that's what's happening. It is the first PS5 and Xbox Series X and S game to break the$70 ceiling. You might say$80 is too much. a lot of people are still pretty excited about this. There will also be a$100 Ultimate Edition with exclusive vehicles, weapons, apparel, story-linked extras. That physical edition won't have a disc inside, but instead a download code that can be preloaded on November 12th.

18:11Sarah Lane: Now, we asked Jen Cutter, who cares a lot about gaming, what her take was on this latest news. And here's what she said. Remains a bummer. Physical versions of games don't mean much anymore, like game keys for Switch. Mostly benefit devs who no longer need to pretend to fit even some of a game within physical media constraints. Does make it harder for retailers to break street date in any meaningful way. Another dev advantage. The price feels pretty normal with current trends. As a comparison, Mario Kart here, Jen is in Canada, would be$109 Canadian dollars. So$113 to$140 for another long tail game like GTA aligns perfectly with said trend.

18:58Sarah Lane: Doesn't make it hurt less. Yeah, it's true. What is the point of a physical box if it only contains a digital download code. I just don't, I don't get it. Is it because we want to walk into a store and walk out with something, even though it's still virtual? I guess so. Yeah. I, it does feel like, it feels like some sort of like, we're in a stopgap type thing where people say, no, I want the thing. I want the physical thing. But, uh, because I mean, I am not that person. I'm like, the more we can just do this with software, the better. You know, get rid of junk. But yeah, I am very interested, first of all, to see if the company can stick to this November 19th date.

19:50Sarah Lane: And how much it is still a franchise that is very beloved. Because it's a big one. It's a big franchise. Oh, it's a big one. I mean, this is a huge release. I mean, saying it's highly anticipated even feels like an understatement. This is going to be a massive deal for the gaming economy. You know, when it comes out later this year, it's going to be all eyes on it. I mean, you know, I'm continually impressed by the evolution of the design and, you know, the shots that I've seen, the screenshots that I've seen of some of these scenes are just really impressive. So it's going to be an interesting game.

20:31I don't like the precedent of this whole idea of, no, there is no physical. I'm a huge fan of like on one hand I like the convenience of like well just you know here it is and yay it installs easily from the cloud or whatever that's that's great right but without physical I just wonder about preservation like long-term preservation when these things don't have an actual physicality to them do they just kind of like die off eventually because the code doesn't exist anymore maybe it was installed on a machine and that machine dies off you know what I mean like that that kind of is a is a bit of a bummer to me about i think you and i probably

21:10Sarah Lane: lean towards the like nostalgia era of just things yes right it's like it's like if i have a roll of film you know that now is uh has been printed and i can look at it is that more meaningful than a folder on my computer that has all the same stuff it's not really different but it feels different feels different yeah yep it's super true well you know at the at the end of the day at the end of my life if i don't have a box full of photos but i have a drive full of photos is that going to matter much to my kids probably probably not matter a whole lot you know maybe it's the same for games maybe a hundred years from now people will be like i don't care about grand theft auto whatever like that's not this new thing yeah no one cares yeah we're on to 23 now yeah exactly who knows people might not care at all open ai and broadcom unveiled their first co-designed ai accelerator chip today uh it's called jalapeno how spicy um it is a custom designed microchip built specifically for running large language models it's an inference accelerator rather than a training chip open ai says it designed the chip from scratch around its own model roadmap, Broadcom and Solistica, handling implementation, handling the board design and the integration, the rack integration.

22:39But they supposedly went from the initial design to manufacturing in nine months, OpenAI and Broadcom calling it the fastest ASIC development cycle ever in high-performance silicon. And they used OpenAI's own models to help with parts of the chip design and optimization, which, yeah, that's a theme that's recurring in AI right now, is that the AI is helping build itself. What could possibly go wrong? But anyways, it's interesting.

23:06Sarah Lane: I mean, in a perfect world, nothing will go wrong. It's very impressive that they managed They managed to do this in nine months, if that timing is correct. But yeah, I mean, this is the new normal. Everybody needs chips, and they need chips fast, and they need more of them. Well, yeah, and I think there's also a move right now, especially among the bigger players in the room, of which OpenAI is one of the biggest, to kind of move away, if they can, from reliance on companies like NVIDIA that are offering a lot of what they need in order to do the things that they're doing. And so now you have OpenAI kind of looking, as others are, Google's doing this too, plenty of others are doing this, and NVIDIA's in a position of, NVIDIA's doing great, but I think Like all of these other companies are actively looking because they have these war chests and a lot to gain.

24:12They're actively looking at ways to which they can kind of own the full stack. And there's a lot of benefits that come from that, too. So this plays into that.

24:19Sarah Lane: I wonder if in five years from now, what the alliances are going to look like. You know, it's like we went from Microsoft and OpenAI, like very, very, very chummy, right? Yeah. Microsoft.

24:36Sarah Lane: And just how these companies work with each other. And a lot of this is geographical and just business stuff as well. But I think it's going to look very different than it does today. I also think that there's going to be a lot more consolidation than what we have today. Because right now, we're just playing in the sandbox. just all the companies are like what works what do people want so yeah yeah i think you're right it will be interesting to see five years is a long time in ai time right yeah maybe maybe i say two years maybe maybe that would be more accurate to see how things change uh all right meta is reporting reportedly building a prediction markets app called arena internally it sits outside the Facebook and Instagram app.

25:28Sarah Lane: So it's a whole other thing, but integrates users from those networks into the app. It would let users trade on future events with a gamified point system, as opposed to money, at least in the beginning. Now, some prediction markets definitely work based on money. Meta says we're not doing that, at least not right now. Meta would like to integrate its social graphs to feed potential traders into its marketplace. The news was reported by the New York Times and confirmed by CNBC separately. So this is happening. But Meta has declined to comment on the project at all. I just feel icky about the sports.

26:08Not just the sports, but the prediction thing in general. Maybe that's a sign of the times, too. Maybe I'm getting older and I just don't understand the whippersnappers and their

26:17Sarah Lane: prediction apps but well see you've got like the poly markets yep um and call she and call she and so i think the biggest problem so i'm not a gambler at all no neither gambling is just not a thing that provides me any joy even if i'm in vegas at a casino i'm just like or i'll just save my money and not lose it. So I'm just not the target market for this at all. But I know that one of the biggest issues with these prediction markets is that people who have knowledge, insider trading type stuff, can predict things that they know are going to be true, even long shots and so that's like one whole issue that is is a political issue but uh otherwise i just wonder how much meta stands to gain from getting people who might have uh an addictive personality or or you know kind of get roped into stuff like this that will make meta look bad later on.

27:32As you put it like that, and it's like, oh, this actually makes perfect sense for Meta. I mean, so much of the algorithms of today. People often look at algorithms and they think of them in terms of addictive quality and everything like that. Meta is also really, I was going to say really good, but let's say their strategy is well known at this point of looking at products that are doing well, looking at services and formats that are doing well and doing it themselves. And, you know, it doesn't always work out for them. But I guess to that end, I'm not really that surprised that Meta might be tracking this.

28:10Sarah Lane: For anybody who's not really familiar with prediction markets, you know, you can bet on, like Jason said, things like sports or, you know, who is going to be the next governor of California? Yeah. Or, I mean, you can predict all sorts of things. And some of it feels very hard. Minutia, even. It's weird. From what I've heard, I've never actually been in any of these apps before. They just don't appear to be good. No. Yeah, I stay away. I don't think inherently it's supposed to be bad for you. But I think when it comes to gambling, and especially when it comes to money, that's where we get into you know scary territory for some people not everybody but some people meta saying oh this is just going to be like a fun thing i don't know how much anyone who's who's actually uh drawn to the prediction market scene is going to care about this because it's not about actual money but we'll see how long that lasts yeah see how long that lasts too right like prove it with points and then, oh, and now.

29:17Yeah, we'll see.

29:19Sarah Lane: Well, every week on Live With It, if you're not watching the show, it's very fun. Roger and I and lots of our guests, Jason included, talk through the gear or software platforms, anything that we're actually using and why we're using it. And if you might want to use it as well. This week, it's my experience with the Amazon Fire Stick HD. So is this a power up over your smart TV? The answer may surprise you. Get Live With It wherever you get your podcasts. Watch us on youtube.com slash at Live With It or support us directly. We have a new Patreon, patreon.com slash Live With It. And thanks to everybody who has joined our Patreon.

29:59Sarah Lane: We're very overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and we're going to keep doing the show just for you. Love it.

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30:49It's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours. It's unreal. There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. like people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love. So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.

31:20All right, we got a bunch of quick headlines. It does feel a little bit like Amazon Prime Week is sucking the oxygen out of tech news a little bit, but we have some headlines that are going to make you look really smart, I promise.

31:32Sarah Lane: Indeed. Anthropic launched Claude Tag. That's an always-on agentic presence inside Slack that lives within each channel and tracks contacts, manages open tasks, follows data access controls, and is available in beta for Claude team and enterprise customers. Yeah, how they put that in there. I mean, I'm not a member of either of those teams. What I saw in the promo videos looks pretty useful. Yeah, interesting. A U.S. official told the Associated Press that Anthropics Mythos model via Project Glasswing, of course, found vulnerabilities in highly classified U.S. government computer systems within hours during a controlled test.

32:13The official did stress that the model did not exploit those weaknesses during that time. Hmm.

32:19Sarah Lane: We want to give a big thanks to KeanuRave100 in our subreddit for the news that SensorTower's latest State of AI report shows ChatGPT slipped below 50 % market share for the first time to 46 .4%. So it didn't slip that much, but not the top dog in town. Google Gemini, 27.7%. 7 % and Anthropics Clod at 10.3 % as they're both gaining ground and closing the gap. But I actually thought the Clod number was kind of low. Yeah, it's a lot of people who are like, oh, I'm Clod all day. Yeah, but I found that kind of interesting, too. I feel like more and more, there's a lot of mindshare around Clod. But I do think that it is kind of the distant Google's everywhere, right?

33:10Like Google's Gemini is all over its products. So, of course, that number is going to be higher, at least for now. And OpenAI has been there since kind of the beginning of this LLM craze. So, yeah, Claude's got some catching up to do. That was a horrible. What was that? Ricky Ricardo? I don't even know what that was. That was from I Love Lucy. Oh, my goodness. I'm so old. Okay. Thanks to RW Nash and the subreddit for this one. LastPass says hackers used OAuth tokens stolen in the Clue. a supply chain attack to get into its Salesforce environment to steal some customer contact data, some CRM data, but password vaults were not exposed.

33:52So there's that.

33:52Sarah Lane: Got a lot of LastPass haters out there because I do a lot of cybersecurity news these days on cybersecurity headlines. Very good show. Check it out if you haven't already. But a lot of folks saying LastPass is the absolute worst. This does not sound that bad. But again, these sorts of things are extremely important for your privacy and security. So definitely look into it if you use any of these platforms. YouTube reached a confidential settlement in an early test case over alleged social media harm to a minor known as RKC. That plaintiff has similar cases with Snap and Meta and TikTok proceeding next month.

34:42I wonder if they'll get a settlement in those cases too. And what does that mean? Maybe we'll find out. Maybe we won't.

34:48Sarah Lane: Yeah, confidential settlement always is like, hmm, kind of. Yeah. No, it's not an admission of guilt, but it's like, make this go away. That's what it feels like, exactly. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told Semifor that Google still has the deepest, don't worry, they still have the deepest AI research bench and no problems hiring top recruits. Of course, this follows what we talked about last week, big name exits by Noam Shazir and Noble winning AlphaFold lead John Jumper. Apparently that spooked investors. So Hassabis is saying, no, no, everything's cool. It's cool. We've got a lot of really smart people here.

35:27Don't worry about it.

35:28Sarah Lane: I think one of the things that fascinates me most, because I don't know any of these people personally, but you say like, okay, like Nobel Prize winning for chemistry. And why would he leave Google for Anthropoc? Why? Well, maybe it's money. And maybe it's just like a more fun environment. Maybe it's both. Hard to say. But yeah, the sort of brain drain thing, I think it's more nuanced than a lot of people give it credit for. These people aren't just bouncing around for no reason. It's actually meaningful work. Especially at that level. Yeah. Indeed. Qualcomm is buying AI chip software maker Modular and a$4 billion all-stock deal, which will power its push into AI devices and data center chips, bringing founders Chris Latner and Tim Davis and roughly 150 employees into the new company.

36:27Okay, swallowed whole. Flipkart's Minutes service is targeting 1 ,500 micro-fulfillment centers by the end of 2026, this after building more than 1 ,000 of them in less than two years throughout India.

36:43Sarah Lane: sk hynex is targeting a july 10th nasdaq debut in what could potentially be the largest adr deal ever at 45.45 trillion one that's around 29 billion dollars uh and adr is like a stock wrapper that lets a u.s investor or or potentially many of them buy shares of foreign companies in dollars on U.S. exchanges. Alibaba currently holds the record at around$21.8 billion raised. Okay. All right. That's the news. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Bill R. has thoughts on guardrails. Yeah. So Bill R. wrote in, I wanted to chime in on the topic of guardrails on basically anything.

37:29Sarah Lane: I know with guardrails, it's not a for sure thing that it's going to protect people and that it's easily circumvented, But I think of it this way. The actual word guardrail. When I think of guardrails, I'm thinking of what they use on sharp turns that have a steep drop off. Does this prevent all deaths from driving over the edge? No. Are there a lot fewer deaths from driving over the edge? Absolutely. Are there ways around the guardrails? Indubitably. As long as there's a net positive, I'm good with guardrails. That's a really great way to explain kind of how I've felt about guardrails as well.

38:06I love that. I'm totally going to borrow that, Bill. That's excellent.

38:11Sarah Lane: Yeah, thanks, Bill. And thanks to everybody who gives us feedback every day. It helps make our show even smarter. If you're thinking about something, you've got an insight into a story, share that with us. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Yes, please. Thank you again to Bill R. for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News show, you can keep us in business. All you got to do is become a patron and it's super easy. Plug in patreon.com slash DTNS into your web browser and support and we'll see you next time.

38:46The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

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