The Google Home app starts showing ads

Google has become an industry giant mainly because it has a huge user base (its search engine’s market share in Spain is close to 90%). This makes your advertising platform a money maker.

But these ads are not limited to websites that partner with Adsense, they are also displayed within your applications.

We have seen this in Google Maps, where businesses can appear as landmarks on the map, or in Gmail with embedded ads. Now it’s Google Home’s turn.

The ads hit Google Home

Google’s popular home automation control application has started showing some users in the US a button to view content in real time on compatible devices, i.e. screens.

If you click on it, a full-screen ad appears inviting you to subscribe to a service to view that content, although there is a three-day free trial period.

Obviously, if we don’t want to use it, we’ll just have to leave that screen, but this shows us how Google is not only starting to switch from free applications to paid applications (see the case of Google Photos) but is increasing the number of ads usage in the whole ecosystem of apps.

It’s not the only company that does this, and Samsung has already received criticism for doing so on mobile phones worth more than a thousand euros. Ironically, the one doing the best here is Amazon, which offers two versions on its Kindle or Fire devices, one cheaper with ads and another more expensive without them. It seems like a good intermediate solution that brands like Google should adopt. Or at least give the option to remove the ads, as Xiaomi does.