Okay Google not okay with Google

This is the simple TV ad Burger King ran to try and voice-activate Google Home (Google’s version of the Amazon Echo). The intention was to get Google to look up the Whopper’s Wikipedia entry and read out the ingredient list.

Straight away, some malcontent hacked the Wikipedia page and added ‘toenail clippings’ and ‘rat’ as Whopper ingredients. Well, of course they did. On an almost related note, Donald Trump set up a phone line so people could report crimes by illegal aliens. The line was reportedly swamped by people phoning in reports of crimes by space aliens.

So to re-cap, Burger King tried to hack Google Home, then someone hacked Burger King’s Wikipedia page, then Google shut down Burger King’s hack and Wikipedia locked down the Whopper’s page to prevent malicious edits. Nobody died, no Russians were involved, everyone got excited about privacy again and another cute advertising idea got socked in the mouth. Here’s an XKCD cartoon:

cartoon where visitors arrive and shout purchase orders at Alexa