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This is not "unprecedented" at all, see e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/lf9egy/comment/iivz...

I am not sure why you're being downvoted. Both the newtab (at the bottom of the page) and the search page have had subtle "ads" for google's new product launches. I remember seeing it for Stadia, and I remember seeing it for "Google One"

They also use it for non-google products.

For example the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II had a hyperlink to "See todays events" on both places.

I believe* the first ad ever under the search bar at google.com was to download Firefox. They've been doing it for that long...

* I think I read that in some book about Marissa Mayer and her decisions around the homepage.

Wasn't the Nexus 7 (2012) the first such ad? Aside from chrome itself bring advertised this way, that is.

A decade before that they had an ad for the Google Search Appliance, which was the first physical product Google sold:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020703150514/http://www.google...

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