Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users (opens in new tab)

No need for the alarm.

This issue simply occurred because a small number of Mini's given out at a Google event had a defect where the "press to send voice command" registered phantom touches.

Not only was this clearly unintentional, but the issue was "resolved" (not really because they just disabled the would-be feature) and deleted the data they accidentally collected in a few days. Very few people were impacted.

It was an over sensitive capacitive touch sensor. I can understand the scepticism but if you've ever tried to make one you'd understand it's easy to screw up in subtle ways that only repro on a subset of devices.