It might be after lunch, but that won’t stop us from serving up a flavor pocket of Google goodness.
“They say Google’s ads will be…Branded!” Among the headlines of Google’s conference call with Wall Street analysts last week (e.g., ‘Recent Disappointing Print Ads Auction Found to Be Disappointing’) was the engine’s stated intention to get into the business of online display advertising over the next year, says the Financial Times. Long a staple of Yahoo!’s, display ads (or branded ads) were ignored by Google until now. But with their foray into video ads underway, Big G is demonstrating a willingness to explore more ad types to augment their usual text-based offerings (hat tip to Marketing Shift.
And then there were 4,862 Google has already released quite a number of products tangentially or marginally related to their bread-and-butter product (web search, for those keeping score at home), and they’re working on or testing more than a dozen others. But for some Google fans, it’s still not enough. Philipp Lenssen points out one man’s attempt to make his own Google Labs tchotchke, complete with logo.
David Coallier has mocked up Google Synonyms, which looks very similar to a Google search page (albeit with several broken links); it offers live suggestions of (what else?) synonyms for terms as you type them into the search box, and even launches a bona fide Google search if you so desire. One small matter: Google may not like the fact that Coallier appears to be running real adSense ads on a page chock full of borrowed Google trademarks. Maybe he’s already freelancing for them, but if not, look for Big G to either shut the site down or make with a job offer.
“Screenshots, getcher Goooooogle screenshots!” More from Philipp…folks world-wide have spied with their little eyes Google futzing around with its homepage, specifically the positioning of the “More” links (Images, Groups, News) that traditionally populate the space atop the search bar. There’s one screenshot that shows the links below the search box, and they’re expandable/collapsable via a link. More shots directly on Philipp’s page show the “More” links migrating to the bottom of the search results page. We’ll try to keep up with them and let you know if they decide to settle down in a new location long-term.
