So Why Not Google?

Thanks to everyone for the pushback on my post yesterday regarding my favorite Super Bowl spots. There were some great honorable mentions including the Doritos "House Rules" and "Samurai" spots. The Samurai, while not a great spot over all, get the mention for great editing.

And in a stunning turn of events, one of you (and you know who you are, Steve) even nominated the Betty White Snickers ad. Just because it was Betty White. Now had Betty White been the one doing the tackling, it would have been a lot more unexpected and funny. And so Betty.

But why not Google? The press has been going ga ga over the Google "Parisian Love" spot. But I was less than impressed. Don't get me wrong - it was a nice enough ad. It didn't have any hairy dudes in their underwear or farting horses, which was good. It was at least classy ("stay classy, Mountain View..."). But my problem is that it was an ad for Google search. And that's it.

Google is synonymous with internet search, and has been for years. Microsoft made a lot of noise this year about its Bing service, but despite their best efforts it hasn't really taken off. And I don't expect it will, either. Can you imagine someone saying "just bing 'B+W filters?'" No. But "just google 'Sheryl crow toilet paper'" sounds natural. But I digress. The fact is that Google didn't need to spend two million dollars on a Super Bowl ad. Everyone already uses their service for what they were advertising. And those that don't *cough* Harris *cough* don't because they like the thrill and the danger of having to perform the same searches over and over without getting the most relevant results.

Had Google used the spot to include some of its other services, such as gmail or Google maps or YouTube or BlogSpot or Google Calendar, or Chrome, the ad would've been much more effective. What Google seems to be building is a one-stop shop for your digital life. Much the way that Apple envisioned the Mac a few years back as your digital hub, Google seems to envision itself as the place to get and store information on the web, and now a way to have it delivered, as well. They're making it so that if you want to - if you're a Googlebot, that is - you don't have to go anywhere else on the web for, well, anything. But search? Come on. This ad would've been amazing in 1998. But in 2010, I'm not impressed with a full minute of watching someone use Google to search the internet, even though it did tell a nice story.

So nice ad, Google. But not good enough to make the Destructo Top 5©®(patent pending). And I'm still wary of you. But that's a topic for another time.