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“We’ve been working here on it for about three years now, maybe longer. Waterloo was in from the ground floor,” said Melissa Dominguez, one of Google’s senior software engineers who also heads up the Google Wifi team in Waterloo, in an exclusive interview. “One of the great things we have is access to the University of Waterloo and be able to hire interns, recent grads and full-time engineers.”

Google Wifi’s app is easy to use and helps make the setup process easy, based on Postmedia’s testing of the product. Its various features to customize and control a network are what makes it particularly interesting though. For example, users can set up profiles for different people in the home — such as children — and assign devices to them, schedule times when their Internet will be shut off automatically or see how much data is being used per device or person.

The companion app can also show historic and real-time usage reports that are easy to understand, troubleshoot problems and create a separate guest network that will still allow friends to use specific social devices on the main network (such as Chromecast or Apple TV) without having full access. Smart home devices can be controlled through the Google Wifi app, too, plus wireless devices can be prioritized to ensure your Netflix will get a seamless video stream even though someone else is playing a video game downstairs.

“The goal here is to really empower the users,” said Dominguez. “To take something that is kind of mysterious to a lot of people, which is how Wi-Fi works, and turn it from something they are afraid to touch into something they can interact with confidently and feel like they know what is going on.”