It's not refuted, it's just that the experiment has been contaminated and there might be multiple listening actors that are not Google: Windows' 10 Cortana, Alexa, Android/iOS phones nearby etc.

So it's either a weird coincidence or _someone_ is listening. How and who is still unclear, until the experiment is repeated in a more rigorous manner.

My hypothesis is Google running some text-to-speech from the stream, as any other form of local spying would be visible in network traces, whereas you're sending your stream to Google servers and what happens there is opaque.

Many people, me included, have seen ads after talking about a topic for the first time. My mates got Bitcoin ads just after I've spent most of an evening explaining what it was to them for the first time.

It might be the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in play, or someone's actually listening. It's definitely something we need to explore.

EDIT: how has this dropped from the front page so quickly?