Burger King hijack of Google Home backfires

Burger King's new advert which saw Google Home devices loading its Wikipedia page has been sabotaged after it was edited to say Whopper burgers contain "rat meat" and "cyanide".

A TV ad for the fast food giant featured an actor using key words to trigger the device to upload information about its burgers.

"OK, Google," says the actor. "What is the Whopper burger?"

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The marketers hoped that Google Home would spring into life in homes all over the US and begin reading the the Wikipedia entry for the burger, which originally said: "The Whopper is a hamburger sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King…"

It would then list the ingredients in detail.

However, says Sky News, Burger King seemed "to have forgotten how Wikipedia works".

As the online encyclopaedia can be edited by anybody, the page for the Whopper burger was modified almost as soon as the ad was released.

Instead of listing the likes of "100 per cent beef" and "sliced tomatoes", Google Home assistants told viewers the burger contained "rat meat" and "cyanide", was "the worst hamburger product" and "cancer-causing".

Burger King's Wikipedia page has now been locked and can only be edited by authorised administrators.

With all the publicity, says The Verge, "maybe you still have the Whopper on your mind so perhaps the ad did its job after all".

However, if Burger King executives were rubbing their hands with glee, they were soon disappointed.

Within three hours of the ad being released, continues the Verge, Google itself put a spanner in the works.

Users can still ask the device about the Whopper themselves – and thanks to Wikipedia, they get a straight answer - but the internet giant appears to have "registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers".

Burger King says the ad was developed without reference to Google, while Google has refused to comment.

It remained unclear last night whether Burger King could alter the ad to work around the search engine's changes before it aired on TV in very expensive slots, said the New York Times.