[weliketocode]

The recordings of my voice here from google home are rather scary.

There's a good second or two of recording time before I say the words "Hey, Google"... which means it's just always recording?!

I know practically speaking I should have known this, but I somehow assumed that nothing was being recorded until after the trigger word.

[lftl]

It's obviously always listening since it has to respond to the trigger word. I assume that it's got a little buffer, and when it detects the trigger word it uploads the spoken text plus a little buffer of time before the trigger word was spoken.

[kyrra]

I believe the device is always listening for the keyword (all done locally), and likely has a buffer of the last few seconds within the device at all times. Then when the keyword is triggered, it starts to capture and relay the request to Google.