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Well, you knew it had to happen sooner or later. It was just a matter of time before Google decided that it’s wide reach over the Internet as arguably the top search engine wouldn’t be good enough for the giant corporation. Just the other day, as of this writing, on April 3, 2007, Google announced that they were going to venture into the world of TV ads. Wow! Let’s just sit down and reflect on this a little bit because this one certainly came out of thin air.

You may or may not recall that several years back, just before the dot com bust, during one of our more infamous super bowls, the TV was littered with Internet company ads. It was like a smorgasbord of who’s who online. Of course you also know what happened not too long afterwards. Most of those dot com startups ended up in the sewer along with billions of dollars in investors’ money. So one has to wonder why Google is messing with success.

Still, the writing is certainly all over the wall, several walls to be exact. Google will be working closely with their partners, EchoStar and Astound Cable, to bring you the best in TV advertising. Their exact words in a released statement, “we are currently running a trial to deliver better ads to viewers and help advertisers, operators and programmers more efficiently buy, schedule, deliver and measure ads on television.”

You know, I read that statement about 20 times and I still have very little idea of what exactly it is that Google plans to do. Better ads. What’s that? Are they actually inferring that they’re going to strive for something called truth in advertising? Because heaven forbid we should have any of that after 50 plus years of telling us that “Dirt Be Gone” will not only clean our clothes but take them out for a night on the town complete with Champaign and caviar.

One has to wonder, continuing to read their statement, what kind of “Google” ads they’ll be running. Will they be Google “sponsored” ads, or will they be ads that actually promote Google itself? And just how do you go about promoting a search engine to people who are obviously more interested in watching the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” than in spending time on their PC looking up the latest dirt on Brittany Spears? I don’t know about you, but I’m not a TV person. I spend most of my day online. I already know about Google and how they try every waking minute to make my existence a pure hell, thank you. I don’t need to watch their “infomercial” on my TV. And for those who don’t even know what a computer is, are they even going to care?

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just a cynical old fool, but I never understood advertising anything on TV that had to do with the Internet. And if people don’t know that Google exists then they certainly don’t have a computer to even go to.

Still, maybe Google is going to go the route of endorsing the latest flavor of Coke by showing all their happy workers drinking it while on break in one of their playrooms.

I guess we’re just going to have to wait and find out.

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Mary Murtha

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