After a long period with no unattended microphones in the house I have had to allowed one to operate for the purposes of hands-free voice based device control. And sure enough…
We were just discussing purchasing an armchair, and have done a flat zero looking online for it because we were talking about getting one at a local shop. 15 minutes later there's a Google ad.
Goodbye #privacy :(
By the way my suspicion is it's not Apple selling voice data to Google. My guess is the problem comes from apps accessing the microphone surreptitiously. I actually think Apple knows app vendors are doing this and they are planning to out them in the next operating system update that will add a little light showing whenever an app is accessing the microphone. Like they did with outing those cache exploiters.
I think they know tightening up privacy can be a big attack on their major competitors.
@freedcreative
Android 10 shows an icon when an app I accessing the microphone (unless it's only oxygen os, but I doubt it).
But it's still scary to see stories like yours.