Google Ups and Downs

From a savvy TV ad campaign to an international service disruption

Ups: Last week Google took to the TV airways, something it had not done before. It launched its first ever TV ad campaign promoting their browser Google ChromeThey’ve found a way to highlight the browser with very inventive and entertaining clips. If you haven’t already, you must go to the Google Chrome site on You Tube and check them out. My favorite is “The Evolution of Simple, “which, as the name suggests, is the least flashy-techy one. Which one is your fave? What remains to be seen is whether the ads will help them gain any market share in the browser sector, as they currently have around 1%.

Downs: When Google has a hiccup, the whole world knows…quickly. The news that Google was down for many users today spread like wildfire. In the last hour I must have seen no less than 50 news stories and blogs related to the outage. Analysts are going crazy trying to identify the culprit, Google or network provider AT&T. All the hubbub certainly confirms to how important the search engine giant is to our technology-dependent world. The interesting thing is, I searched high and low for some kind of announcement from Google addressing the issue. I couldn’t find anything (maybe my Google search engine wasn’t working properly!?!).





Erika Moskal


WBS Connect