Bryson Meunier spotted that when he asked his Google Home device "what is my day like?" it responded with a tip about Beauty & The Beast. It says Beauty & The Beast opens today and then gives a little commercial like clip about it. Google said this was not a paid ad, it was a developer integration with some of their partners. Google quickly dropped this because of all the confusion.
Here is Bryson's video of this in action:
New Beauty & the Beast promo is one way Google could monetize Home. cc: @gsterling @dannysullivan pic.twitter.com/9UlukSocrO
— brysonmeunier (@brysonmeunier) March 16, 2017
Many news sites picked up on this story and it is all over Techmeme now.
Google said in a statement, "this isn't an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales."
Well, Google did pull it down because of the confusion. It does sound a lot like an ad, even though it was free.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
