By G.W. Schulz
The New York Times reported yesterday (and NPR followed up with a little piece) that Google planned to start selling advertisements in the print editions of 50 major newspapers for a test run. Considering the search-engine giant’s business still relies on advertising at the end of the day despite where it’s hunting lately for new investments, it looks like the “do no evil” kingpins of Wall Street are hoping to build an alliance with the old guard of journalism and information dissemination.
According to the Times:
“Advertisers can log into Google’s main advertising system, known as AdWords, and click to go to the newspaper section. They will see a list of the participating papers and the sorts of ads that are available. They can then enter a bid for a certain type of advertisement, specifying the section and date range. Newspapers in turn see these bids and accept the ones they want.”
Hell, maybe we’ll see a full-size Fleshbot ad in the Orange County Register by the end of the Month. Likely not.
Anyway, Google appears to be trying to figure out what to do with its mountains of cash and now globally recognized brand name. They couldn’t throw $1.6 billion at YouTube and its tangle of litigation fast enough.
So, where to next, Google? Selling gorilla graffiti spots on sidewalks?