I play my share of silly mobile games on an old iPad (not connected to any accounts I actually use for anything anymore, of course). That means I see a decent amount of ads. About 50% are for the bullshit "you can make $500 a day playing this game" cons that are so blatantly bullshit it's almost impressive. A few more are for things ranging from gimmicky gadgets, retailers like Temu, and random other stuff (a protein-based ramen that costs $50 for six packets is one I happily ignored today).

But over the last week, I've started getting a bunch of ads for Google.

Yes, Google.

It's specifically for the Google app, but all that does is essentially replace opening Google in the browser. It has a few features (taking photos for identifying things or solving math problems), but otherwise, it's basically exactly what anyone using Google would expect.

And I cannot imagine Google thinking that they need to get the attention of folks playing mobile games -- a group that, in general, almost certainly has more members who have never heard of DuckDuckGo or possibly even Bing than who have -- unless it felt its numbers were somehow slipping. It's not even a push for Gemini AI, which I might at least understand.

Like the subject line says, this is anecdotal, but it's something that's caught my eye, and definitely has me curious.