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Burger King Runs Ad Triggering Google Home Devices; Google Shuts It Down (theverge.com)
Burger King unveiled a new advertisement earlier today designed to trigger users' Google Home devices. The ad specifically used the Google Home trigger phrase "Okay, Google" to ask "What is the Whopper burger?," thus triggering the Google Assistant to read off the top result from Wikipedia. But less than three hours after Burger King launched the ad, Google disabled the functionality. The Verge reports: As of 2:45PM ET, Google Home will no longer respond when prompted by the specific Burger King commercial that asks "What is the Whopper burger?" It does, however, still respond with the top result from Wikipedia when someone else (i.e., a real user) other than the advertisement asks the same question. Google has likely registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers, as it does with its own Google Home commercials.
I'm glad google shut this down, but I have to admit I'm rather impressed with Burger King on this one. Nicely played.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
ONLY apps can app apps, and Apper King was simply trying to app apps while apping other apps! LUDDITE Google is too stupid to figure out how to app the app, so they used LUDDITE hackers to shut it down!
Apps!
Laugh's on me I guess, everyone wants an Echo or Home now.
"Everyone wants an Echo" isn't the same thing as "Everyone wants a device that can be manipulated by an advertisement in a movie, TV show, or web video".
Disclaimer: I have no desire to purchase either an Echo or a Home - I just don't see any significant advantage to owning them, while I do see a lot of potential disadvantages.
#DeleteChrome
... "Malicious attackers in Burger King's advertising department use vulnerability in Google home to make it do stuff its owner didn't request".
It's a bit rich to call it an ad and chuckle about.
It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad. For now it was reading a wikipedia page. What happens when scumvertisers and other malicious adversaries figure out a way to make it spend money without your consent? Or to report to them that you have heard the ad, or worse.
I drink to make other people interesting!
> What are you trying to hide Google???
Burger King should make a follow up commercial that poses that very question. Make into a conspiracy. The public seems fond of those nowdays.
You kind of should belittle people who want that shit it it's current state, in opposition to the marketing that tells them they are special if they buy that shit. Counter marketing is fair and reasonable in today's market place. Purposeful hacking by Burger King, well, technically it is a computer crime, although the bar for security is exceedingly low, they still did intentionally hack and abuse a computer network, that network being between the consumer and Google, this done in order to steal advertisement time worth millions of dollars. So really quite naughty and a criminal offence, technically.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You can say, "Alexa, goodnight," and all the lights turn off, the tv turns off, any electronics turn off, the AC adjusts, and Alexa makes sure the doors are locked and reports their state.
And then you change your wifi password and spend 3 days chasing down random things you forgot about.
Then the over priced door lock breaks, and you don't even notice for 3 months. It mean... it says it was locking and unlockng but the bolt wasn't moving.
Then some sensor flakes out and turns your heat off. And worse, you turn it on manually... and then it promptly gets signaled to turn off a few seconds later. And your not home... and your wife has to unplug the nest to stop it from shutting the heat off until you can get home to figure out what is wrong.
Meanwhile the asshole kids next door figured out how to take remote control of your smart TV...
While watching tv, you can use Alexa to pause, play, skip forward/backward, and change the volume, etc.
Unless you turn it up to high by accident and Alexa can't hear you telling it to turn it back down.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
And then your son storms upstairs pissed that you screwed up his guild raid with your bullshit ... again.
With Alexa, you can control anything the Logitech Harmony Elite can control. So, anything with IR and many WIFI controlled devices.
Yeah, I have one of those. I love it. But its also pretty fallible. It'll end up on the wrong TV input, it'll get its states mixed up 'toggle power' on the wrong thing or put the HTPC which was awake to sleep when i select it. No big deal, tap tap tap... problem fixed. I really don't want to talk to it... or have 3 people in the room all trying to fix it by issuing voice commands.
Once you can trigger events across your home with your voice and not just turn on a light, you just can't go back.
Yeah, lets come back to this one.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
I pretty much guarantee you that you spent more time setting that mode up, then I'd ever get back using it.
And THAT is where home automation is at. Its a great toy for the person who WANTS to play with it; who enjoys spending hours setting up programs they'll only use twice. Who enjoys debugging all the glitches. Who's ok when a power surge blows $500 worth of smart light bulbs. Who doesn't mind doing a firmware upgrade on his front door lock.
But for the average person, no, its not like caller id. Caller id is simple and just works. And when it fails, it just says unknown number and you have to pick up the call to find out who it is or let it go to voice mail. Home automation is a rube-goldberg machine that is a lot of fun if you like building and maintaining rube goldberg machines -- but its not practical and it frequently fails in pretty spectacular ways.
Google should have cheated on the sort algorithm and put in their own add in top place: "A slab of muscle tissue from an immature castrated bull between two lumps of overheated grains stripped of their nutritional components, accompanied by...."