So, I don’t trust them to have actually done what I’m going to describe, (and honestly I’ve just accepted that even with everything off, they’re still giving me ads based on stuff I’ve only talked about and never clicked or written anything), but:
The programs that recognize specific phrases(Ok Google), are always separate from normal voice recognition (and much much lighter in terms of processing). So, if they weren’t Google, they might have left the “Ok Google” recognition on, but not process anything else that the mic receives.
They’re probably still listening in though.
Not necessarily you or your case, but I’m still convinced that a lot of people just have confirmation bias (only noticing it when it happens and discounting the thousands of otherwise innocent ads). There’s also subconscious ad effects, like you were only talking about it to begin with because your saw it somewhere because it’s been spreading by weird of mouth from people who initially saw an ad
