Some years back, Google's then CEO Eric Schmidt openly stated that "The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."[1]
It is also (as has been the case with numerous other tech firms) been to take other experiences, here maximal ad saturation, straight up to the pain tolerance, before (one presumes) dialing it down a bit.
(Facebook have similarly done this repeatedly with surveillance, stalking, and dark patterns, Microsoft formerly did this with licensing fee and process requirements, the latter limited by the tendency to drive users to either piracy or, vastly worse in Microsoft's view,[2] Linux or Free Software alternatives.)
The rationale is effectively the same as that captured by Jules Dupuit's 19th century observation on the miserable quality of third-class rail service:
It is not because of the several thousand francs which they would have to spend to cover the third class wagons or to upholster the benches. ... [I]t would happily sacrifice this [expense] for the sake of its popularity.
Its goal is to stop the traveler who can pay for the second class trip from going third class. It hurts the poor not because it wants them to personally suffer, but to scare the rich."[3]
My presumption is that Google are looking to pry those people who can afford a new (and presumably less-ad-saturated) device or (more likely) service off Android TV and onto their alternative offerings. I'm hoping this backfires via defections to other vendors, outright abandonment, and/or regulatory sanction. Though my expectations for all of these responses are low based on prior experience.
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Notes:
1. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eric-schmidt-google-creepy_n_... (2010-10-4)
2. Bill Gates in 1998: "[A]s long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-09-fi-micro... (2009-4-6) See also Jeff Raikes "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it ti be us rather than somebody else" https://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-soft... (2007-3-12)
3. I don't have the original 1849 source, though this particular translation appears in a now-purged Inc. post by Bill Murphy Jr.: https://web.archive.org/web/20180307183620/https://www.inc.c... Based on dates and Dupuit's publication listing, this is probably found in De l’influence des peages sur 1’utilité des voies de communication.