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When it's connecting to a wifi access point your phone or device doesn't know what resource you'll actually request so instead it pings the most resilient thing a Google engineer could think of at the time without risking DDoSing someone which is Google.

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We are talking about smart home things here though, which usually depend on their own services anyway.

This is more of a problem with things like Windows reaching out to msftconnecttest.com or some other generic internet service. But in the case of a smart home device it's needs are usually more well defined.

This becomes harder with a consumer router trying to determine if it is online though unfortunately because of exactly what you describe.

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