Google Wants To Put Ads on Your Fridge

If you're reading this, then you must be on a computer, a tablet or a smart phone, and therefore you've probably encountered a fair number of ads so far today. Well, Google is looking to take the whole advertisement-bombardment thing to a new level: Google wants to put ads on your fridge. And in your car. And basically everywhere else Google can possibly think of putting an advertisement.

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission filed last year and released Tuesday, Google outlined this vision for the future that included itself and other companies "serving ads" to people on a whole range of different devices and items. Smart fridges and smart ovens — super-fancy household appliances with built-in screens of differing sizes and capabilities — actually already exist, so it was really only a matter of time before we started seeing advertisers getting involved.

Back in January, Google also announced a $3.2 billion deal to buy Nest Labs, a start-up that works on smart thermostats and smoke detectors. And of course, there's Google Glass and smart-watches, which were basically made as vessels for advertisers. Well, not actually, but you catch our drift.

But — shocking, we know — Google is actually at least partly aware that the average person finds advertisements a nuisance. It's really not something we'd all love to have more of in our lives. So the plan, apparently, is to figure out ways these advertisements could come in the form of useful, personal suggestions, for example an app letting you know through Google Glass when the next bus is coming giving you an option to call an Uber instead.

OK, we think we got it. It would look a little something like this, right?

1. Your Refrigerator. Maybe people with full crispers will start getting advertisements for juicers or blenders. OR, maybe there will come a day when the smart fridge can scan the contents and come up with recipes you could try with what you already have. We'd definitely buy that.

2. Your Car Dashboard. Maybe driving past movie theaters will bring up movie listings. Or when you hit 20 miles over the speed limit, phone numbers for driving schools and anger-management classes start popping up...

3. Your Thermostat. As you pad over to the thermostat in your slippers in the middle of the night to ramp it up a couple of degrees, you get suggestions for where to buy cashmere socks and how to book a cheap flight to Aruba.

4. Your Oven. When you bend down to check out how that turkey's coming along, you get adverts for deals at Domino's pizza in case it isn't going so well.

5. Your Watch. A watch synced to your smart phone calendar could give you helpful hints of things to buy three days before your mum's birthday/wedding anniversary/cousin's graduation.