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Re:Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning by ocdtrekkie on Thursday March 16, 2017 @03:35PM (#13888377)
The Google spokesperson's response is truly a classic too: "This isn’t an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales."
Re:Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning by grasshopper12a on Thursday March 16, 2017 @04:06PM (#13888670)
A few days ago on HN I've read a comment of someone explaining how one of the first guys who created a PR agency called it PR because the word "propaganda" sounded bad. This sounds about the same to me, the word "ad" is replaced with "we involve partners".
Re:Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning by gumby on Thursday March 16, 2017 @07:51PM (#13890204)
That was probably my comment and it was slightly different: the word "propaganda" was the original word for what we now call advertising ("propagate the message"). It was Goebbels becoming "Minister of Propaganda" (yes, minister of advertising) that lead to the change.

Interestingly enough "the guy", Edward Bernays, was Freud's nephew, and he literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled, yes, "Propaganda"

Re:Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning by Sophira on Thursday March 16, 2017 @08:19PM (#13890327)
There's that, but there's also the fact that they invoke a musical number from the movie at the same time ("Be Our Guest") making this response in itself a bit of an ad.