Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems like the motive behind that wording was more likely to attract the privacy-conscious users -- as this phrase often implies -- rather than it being a hook for their other products. That's why I feel it's click-baity.
Especially considering the talk around the device collecting data when it was announced.
I think you're being overly cynical. After getting part-way through the article I understood that the "trojan horse" was inbuilt hooks for Google's (presumably) impending home automation hardware.
If you're partway through the article, you've already taken the clickbait. The point is to confuse you with possibly misleading terms, so you click to read the article and see what they really meant.