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I suppose when you create the most useful invention since the Corby Trouser Press, you have the right to outsmart your audience. And the good people at Google certainly like to take advantage of their elevated position on the first day of the fourth month.
Friends, for your inspection and enjoyment, we bring you the top ten Google April Fool gags.
One more thing. Only nine of these are real Google April Fools. One is an invention of the great minds at Creativepool. But which one?
How much do you imagine a quarter page, black and white advertisement in the London edition of Metro (the free commuter newspaper) costs? A few hundred quid? A bit more? The answer is £6,636.
Perhaps I’m terribly naive or getting a bit old, but I find this remarkable. Six and a half grand buys you access to 744, 386 readers to whom you can display a 200mm high x 112mm box in mono, sharing the page with editorial and other advertisements over which you have no control. Want colour? That’ll be 25% more.
Back in 1999, Ruth Kedar was teaching design at Stanford University, California. While here she was introduced to two students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two students were looking for a designer who could design a logo and website and Ruth was invited to attend a meeting. The first time she met with the Page and Brin they told her they were establishing a company based on internet searches and the youthful pair were planning on giving people free, instant access to information about any subject. “It’s going to be called Googol,” smiled Larry Page, “A mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeroes”.
Planet media tends to throw up buzzwords like a heavy drinker with acute salmonella. ‘Social networking’, ‘disruption marketing’, ‘viral video’ – and now here comes another: ‘hyper local’. You’re likely to hear this phrase an awful lot, because if predictions are anything to go by, it describes the brave new frontier for broadcasting, the web and even print.
Rather like a balloon, the world’s various media outlets have inflated and expanded over the last twenty years or so. Sky ushered in global satellite TV in the 90s, the internet engulfed our lives in the early 21st century and social websites linked us all to likeminded folk across the world in recent years. As the balloon stretched, regional television became more amorphous and considerably less relevant, ITV soaked up the provincial broadcasting companies (Granada, Central, HTV etc.) and, just this year, Global Media Group has swallowed the independent local radio network whole, rebranding every station Capital (Capital? That’s only London surely?) and duplicating its output across the nation.
Google is the most popular website in the world. It has become so integral to our everyday life that typing search words into the Google engine has become as natural as sipping your coffee or answering the phone. Without Google the internet would be an inaccessible mess. Ideas for this very blog often begin with brainstorming via Google. Google is of course, much much more than a search engine. Here are some facts you might not know about the company which organised the internet.
You’re aware, I’m sure, of the internet. That unimaginably large archive of funny cat video clips and ladies in frilly pants – that thing. Well, as the aforementioned internet has grown to include Justin Bieber fan pages and Beatles songs on iTunes, ‘search’ has become a business bigger than Poundland. And you may well have heard of an outfit who’ve done alright for themselves by pointing internet users to pictures of people they hated at school and discount Ugg boots. They’re called Google.
Would you like to own Twitter? I’m not selling it or anything, so don’t reach for your cheque book just yet. But if you were richer than golden syrup, I’m guessing you might be tempted. Only, here’s a note of caution – Twitter has yet to make a penny in profit.
Google has changed its privacy policy. But does it matter?
Thursday, March 1st, 2012Well, no. The searching thing is certainly Google’s primary service but not its actual business (it doesn’t charge for the searches, as we know). No, Google is an advertising business, pure and simple.
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Tags: advertisers, Advertising, Europe, Google, internet, law, privacy, search, software, Technology, UK
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