No, he didn't. How do you justify carrying a smartphone with an always listening microphone into shared public spaces (many listen for wake words now), but get hung up on having a microphone in your private residence?
Google has a horrific track record on privacy, but Amazon knows who their customers are, and would never do anything to violate their trust. With Amazon, you're the customer, with Google, you're the product.
> "How do you justify carrying a smartphone with an always listening microphone into shared public spaces (many listen for wake words now), but get hung up on having a microphone in your private residence?"
I've preordered this phone, which mitigates against this type of surveillance by the use of switches for turning off hardware devices like the camera and the microphone (and by making the software stack as open source as it can be):
I also currently use one of the few smartphones without a front facing camera, which only cuts out one form of surveillance but does help.
So whilst I'm putting up with a temporary invasion of privacy for now whilst I wait for the Purism 5 to be released, I'm not passively accepting surveillance from one device whilst criticising another.
Google has a horrific track record on privacy, but Amazon knows who their customers are, and would never do anything to violate their trust. With Amazon, you're the customer, with Google, you're the product.