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Google is no stranger to leaks. So much so that the company has become a poster-child for new phone hardware being unwrapped months prior to an official launch. The company has even gone to great lengths to play on this leak culture by attempting to use Pixel Phone leaks to its advantage in marketing. Two years ago, at Google’s October hardware event, the company trolled us all by curating a number of popular influencer videos about the Pixel 3 and 3XL and implying that we were in for a surprise when we arrived in NYC. Funny thing was, we weren’t. The majority of the leaks were spot on and there was little to no new information revealed when the phone was made official.
The past couple of years have seen leaks around new Chrome OS devices, phones, smart displays and just about anything else Google has going on in Mountain View. This year, we’ve been tracking, of course, the Pixel 4a along with a new Android TV/Chromecast dongle and the recently discovered ‘Prince’ Nest speaker. The latter was all but confirmed when the new Assistant-enabled Nest speaker passed through the FCC and a Japanese regulatory website yesterday. This time, instead of a cheeky response or the usual radio silence, Google has outed themselves by sharing “what the Nest team is working on from home.” – The Verge
In a single image and a quick, 12-second video, Google reveals the new Nest speaker that is identical to the one that turned up yesterday at the FCC. In the video, we see a blue version that looks pretty close to the “Mist” hue found on the Nest WiFi. The other color, found also in the regulatory filing, appears to be somewhere between “not pink” sand and coral but we’ll have to wait for another announcement from Google before we know the actual nomenclature of the speaker and the catchy color options. Anyway, here’s a very quick and catchy look at the new Nest smart speaker that should be headed our way very soon.
You would have thought that the Hey Google event earlier this week would have been a good platform to debut a new Nest speaker but perhaps Google wasn’t ready and this response to the media is simply the company’s way of building up a little hype before an official launch. As you can see in the video, Home/Nest products VP of product management Rishi Chandra and other members of the Nest team have the speakers around the house and have had time to make a pretty cool promo video while working from home. A launch feels imminent at this point. It looks like Google may finally be figuring out how to market hardware and that’s a very good thing. This video was a wise move but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see what the pricing and availability will be for the new Nest speaker.
