Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Was Google Ad Designed for Viral Mockery? "Parisian Oops," "Is Tiger Feeling Lucky Today"…What Next?

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Yesterday, the day after after Google aired its first national commercial on the Super Bowl, an exec at a rival Internet company marveled at what high favorable scores the “Parisian Love” advertisement got, adding that the possibilities for spoofs were endless.

“I have a feeling that making fun of it will probably be a good thing for Google,” sighed the exec, who would dearly like such attention.

BoomTown doubts anyone at Google (GOOG) meant it that way. But, indeed, it did not take two seconds before the takeoffs on the ad–a sentimental, but effective, ongoing story about love in Paris, using only Google’s iconic search box–appeared.

Sources at the search giant said the ad, which was actually launched many months ago, was an in-house favorite already, and the massive marketing spending recently by both Yahoo (YHOO) and especially by Microsoft (MSFT) for Bing–clocking in at $100 million each–finally prompted the gauge-the-reaction move.

The Google spot seems to have inspired reaction, especially from those who like to poke fun.

And both the videos below do it well–one by Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on a more problematic Paris romance and one on Tiger Woods’s search history from Slate V. I added the original Google ad at the bottom:

Parisian Oops

Is Tiger Feeling Lucky Today?

Parisian Love

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald