Yahoo News Google Home is now playing unprompted ads for 'Beauty and the Beast'
It's a tale as old as time: You ask your $129 voice-controlled, in-home digital assistant about your day and it answers with an ad for Disney's Beauty and the Beast remake.
The stuff of fairy tales, right? Well, maybe if you're the manufacturer of Google Home and your happily-ever-after consists of anthropomorphized dollar signs.
"By the way, Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast opens today," Google Home helpfully told a number of customers today. "In this version of the story, Belle is the inventor, instead of Maurice. That rings truer if you ask me. For some more movie fun, ask me to tell you something about Belle."
Movie fun indeed.
Owners of the devices took to Twitter to note the latest aggressive move from advertising giant Google. "New Beauty & the Beast promo is one way Google could monetize Home," observed Bryson Meunier.
Unsolicited advertisements blaring at you over your morning coffee is also one way Google could piss off a lot of its Home customers.
Mashable reached out to the company in an attempt to determine if this is the start of a larger campaign, or if these unprompted ads are a new and permanent feature of the Home ecosystem, but did not receive a response as of press time.
But not to worry! Google, for its part, wants you to know that everything is chill. Like, so chill it's Frozen.
"This isn’t an ad," a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land, "the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales."
Got that? The video above doesn't depict an advertisement, but rather a "partner" being Google's "guest" and sharing its "tale."
Hey Google, maybe hold off on inviting random guests into other people's homes? That's kind of rude. As for the so-called tale, yeah, I can't wait to hear more of your old-timey stories. That exciting yarn about the two-for-one Denny's special always was a favorite of mine.
