Ask Google Home what your day is like today, and it will remind you that Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is opening. Google says this isn’t an ad. But it’s definitely an out-of-the-ordinary cooperation with a Google Home “partner.”
The promotion was spotted by Bryson Meunier, whose child was definitely excited to hear the news delivered by Google Home (listen for the cute “yeah!” at the end):
Here it is on my own Google Home:
Google sent Search Engine Land this 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.
That’s a head-scratcher. Disney is the company behind Beauty and the Beast. Disney is not one of the official “partners” listed for Google Home.
Moreover, this isn’t something that any partner could simply make happen without Google’s deep cooperation, to my understanding.
Google has done a special message like this at least once before, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as 9to5Google noted then. But there was no company or product that benefitted from that.
So, while the Beauty and the Beast promo might not be an ad in term of a direct exchange of cash, it’s very much a special commercial promotion that’s seemingly a first for Google Home — and likely the first of many to come.
Source: Search Engine Land