John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Google: We Prioritize the End User Over the Advertiser, Unless We’re the Advertiser

“People wouldn’t like [ads on the homepage]. We prioritize the end user over the advertiser.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, August 2009

How’s this for product placement? Google is promoting its new Nexus One “superphone” from the front pages of two of its most highly trafficked properties: Google.com and YouTube.

Surf over to the former and you’ll find a short plug for the Nexus One right beneath the query field on the company’s otherwise spartan search page. Point your browser at the latter and you’ll find a tile pitching an entire YouTube channel dedicated to the device, complete with demos and, of course, a direct link to the Google-hosted Web store through which it can be purchased (see below; click on image to enlarge).

Together, these sites reach hundreds of millions of visitors a month, so this is not an insubstantial promotion, and it’s sure to generate a fair bit of buzz for the Nexus One, which won’t be sold in stores.

This isn’t the first time Google (GOOG) has promoted a consumer electronics device from its homepage–the search giant featured Droid there last November and T-Mobile’s G1 in October 2008.

As I have noted here before, it’s interesting to see Google leveraging search–a product in which it enjoys a de facto monopoly–to promote a second product that isn’t yet dominant (Android).

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December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

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December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google