Google's view of the world's advertising

I wrote about Google’s lack of candor at its Investor Q & A yesterday in my post, “Google speak for Google Investors.” I was also struck by Google’s seemingly unflappable belief that they really do know what’s best, not only for the world’s information, but also for the world’s advertising.

Google’s reaction to perhaps the only question posed that brought up, ever so gingerly, the possibility that Google may not succeed in organizing all of the world’s information, was that the Google wisdom will ultimately prevail. Early in the conference call, Google was asked to give two diversification examples: one example of an initiative that exceeded expectations, and one example of an initiative that did not reach expectations. For the underperforming example, Google cited its Google print ads initiative, a foray discussed by businessweek.com as “Google's Print Auction Fizzles…The search giant's auction of magazine ad space didn't generate much enthusiasm — or business, in the case of one successful bidder.” Google’s discussion of its print ad auction during the conference call, however, put forth the notion that Google advertising know how would eventually transform the print industry, once print publications understand that publications become better due to Google ads. Google suggested that it is almost inevitable that Google will be successful with print ads, because readers will choose publications with Google ads, over publications without Google ads. In other words, Google print ads will be an integral, sought after part of publication content, much as Google “Sponsored Links” are an integral, sought after part of Google search.

Consumer clamoring for the Google know-how was also put forth as a principal motivation for Google’s deal with Dell; by enabling the Google experience “out of the box,” Google provides customer satisfaction not otherwise available.

One of the most telling responses by Google was to a question about its job postings. Google cautioned the questioner not to infer anything from the types of jobs that Google posts help wanted ads for. Google indicated that while its job postings may look like help wanted notices for real jobs, in reality, they are simply part of a marketing program to attract great people to get in contact with Google (isn’t that normally considered bait and switch?) and bear no correlation to Google’s literal staffing objectives.

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