Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Google Pushing Chrome So Hard It's Buying…Print Ads?

Google has so much money and is so intent on pushing its Chrome browser that it’s willing to put marketing dollars into the weirdest places.

Like a print newspaper.

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan was flipping through the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times yesterday and stumbled into this Chrome ad (click image to enlarge). It’s a reference to Google’s head-scratching “Things I Learned About Browsers” e-book.

This is the part of the post where I’m supposed to point out how ridiculous it is for a Web company to advertise anything at all in offline media. And how especially ridiculous it is for someone to advertise a browser in a newspaper.

But then again: It worked!

(Almost as surprising: Search guru Danny Sullivan routinely reads the print version of the LA Times!)


comments so far. Add yours.

  • http://www.aripaparo.com aripap

    This is profoundly ridiculous. The ad has no call to action. It doesn’t explain how Chrome or Google really solves the problem being referenced. The URL advertised is hard to type, and as I’m typing this it isn’t loading. Also, if the point of the ad is to get people to upgrade from an older browser, then won’t they be unable to load the site referenced on their old browser since the site is all HTML5, etc?

  • Anonymous

    Google says: No Chrome OS Netbooks for Christmas
    http://www.eweek.com/showblog/.....Christmas/

    Googles Web OS is not being built by engineers, it’s being built by lawyers.

    It has always been said that Chrome OS will be a superset of Android, and as we know the VCSY lawsuits filed last week are because VCSY claims that Android is infringing on the VCSY 6,826,744 and 7,716,629 patents.

    Vertical lawsuit against Interwoven, LG and Samsung:

    http://www.docstoc.com/docs/62.....oven-et-al

  • http://twitter.com/rick_roth Rick Roth

    I don’t understand the claim at the end of the article where you say “but then again, it worked!”

    What worked? The ad campaign? Do you have evidence that Google picked up more Chrome users based off of this ad?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_J6MIBMDNQOOGLN2UIAUPG34BOU GuillaumeB

    Wow you’re kinda late, it’s been around since january in France
    http://is.gd/hBf03

  • Anonymous

    It’s the WSJ Mon-Sat :)

  • http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/ PKafka

    at least two *online*publications – the kind of places where it’d be actually useful to learn about chrome – wrote about the ad – that’s a success, right?

  • http://www.webhostinglogic.com/ Ben Stiller

    I think Google won’t place an ad on print newspapers if they don’t see there is an audience that can pick it up and use Chrome browser or their new OS. They may have heard that not all internet users do browse intensively thus they don’t have a clue that there are other browsers aside from Internet Explorer.

  • Anonymous

    this website is very good, you can go and see it===clshoe.us===

  • http://simplyconverged.blogspot.com/ Subrahmanyam

    Google has, at varying points in time, taken out multiple adverts in print and outdoor media in India. A short list here http://goo.gl/XQw3c

  • eknirb

    Chrome is now as slow as mud. Hello, Firefox.

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