My Amazon Alexa Listens to conversations to suggest items to purchase the next time I go on amazon. I hate this.
Also I pretty much only use it to listen to the radio.
Also I pretty much only use it to listen to the radio.
Bottom line is that Amazon and Facebook somehow decided to show exactly the random stuff we fed them. None of the stuff fed to Google, Microsoft, or Apple ever made it out in an obvious enough way for us to notice it.
It's not something to draw a solid conclusion on, I'm sure the experiment had plenty of flaws but the degree of suspicion it raised was way above the noise floor and it was enough for me personally.
If I search for something, it immediately shows up in the facebook feed of the person I live with. We aren’t even friends on facebook.
However we share an IP address via NAT, and I’m sure location data has leaked enough to correlate us.
I have never yet come across an example of this where there aren’t correlating variables other than the always listening mic theory.
We even tried to make sure the terms are "plausible" given all other data the companies may have had on us. Age, social status, etc. We picked things where we're comfortably but not too obviously in the target audience (no "energy drink for student gamer" type thing).
I can’t tell from your description whether this was adequately controlled or not.
I had an Echo that I installed in a spare room in the house and used for a short time exclusively to have these made up conversations next to it and keep talking about a "Whirlpool washing machine" without ever using the Alexa hot-word. The keyword really couldn't leave that room except via the Echo. After a short time to my surprise I started seeing this in my Amazon. I have no doubt that the Echo is (at least occasionally) listening and sending information without any indication that it does.
My friends tested their own stuff in their household with their own keywords in much the same way that I did. Google Home, Apple Homepod/Siri, Facebook, Microsoft Cortana. The only 2 people who saw their keyword pop up again were myself with Amazon and one other with Facebook.
I can't draw the conclusion that Google does not do this, maybe they just do it smarter. But I can certainly say I cannot under any circumstances give Amazon the benefit of the doubt.
So - are you absolutely certain that nobody in your household used the term ‘whirlpool’ in any text based online interaction?
For example - is it possible that you emailed someone while you were coordinating these tests and you or they are Gmail users?