Google's Echo-rival will have a special 'off the record' setting

Google knows how important it is to avoid crossing the "creepy" line, so the company is baking privacy controls into its smart home appliance, Google Home, CEO Sundar Pichai said on stage at Vox Media's Code Conference on Wednesday.

The voice-powered device, which works a lot like Amazon's Echo by letting users speak to it to make restaurant reservations, get the weather and play music, will have an "off the record" mode where it won't store any data about search or queries.

Users will basically be able to tell Home to find information in "incognito" mode, or take past questions that they've asked the device "off the record."

Google had previously talked about how this setting will also live in its chat app, Allo, which is powered by the same virtual assistant. If you turn on incognito mode in chat, Allo won't store any data or information from that conversation.

The real power of the virtual assistant is that it "learns" about its users by looking at their past interactions, but Pichai says that Google recognizes that people don't want all their information stored.

"The machine learning and AI will help us do privacy better," Pichai said. "Over time we can get smarter at giving users sophisticated privacy controls."

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