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Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

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Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#41
post #28

A minor observation, but I appreciate how they show the user highlighting text in one of their search results for truffles. Having done some usability work and watched users work on their computers, highlighting what is being read is such a common behavior, it's cool to see Google so in touch.

People really do that? I had no idea. Why do they highlight what's being read? I'm confused and intrigued.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#42

Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…

Bing being merely as good as Google means the Bing team haven't done enough. That means they have to compete on brand, and that's really hard since Google has a stronger brand. Yahoo's search results have been on par with Google for most people's purposes for a while, but that hasn't helped them.

To compete with Google on search you have to do to Google what Google did to AltaVista: be noticeably better, consistently. As you said, Google is nowhere near good enough yet.

So this is what Google is scared of, and that's why it's in their best interest to keep innovating, because otherwise someone somewhere might beat them to the next real breakthrough.

Bing so far has failed by not making any real technical progress, and only reaching parity. That means right now they have to compete on brand, and that sucks for them.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#43
post #28

A minor observation, but I appreciate how they show the user highlighting text in one of their search results for truffles. Having done some usability work and watched users work on their computers, highlighting what is being read is such a common behavior, it's cool to see Google so in touch.

People really do that? I had no idea. Why do they highlight what's being read? I'm confused and intrigued.

I do it to keep track of my position when I scroll a document.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Translated Search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=clir:1&...

Thanks guys, I'm aware of my options. :P I wonder if there's been a noticeable spike in search terms related to that ad, e.g. people searching for how to say "you are cute" in French.

Not noticeable enough to show up on Trends:

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X

Though everything else related to the Superbowl has managed to show up. People continue to be enamored of The Who, and the Call Barney Stinson guy seems to have gotten his money's worth.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#45

Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…

Tell us why you think Bing is as good as Google.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#46
post #42

Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…

Bing being merely as good as Google means the Bing team haven't done enough. That means they have to compete on brand, and that's really hard since Google has a stronger brand. Yahoo's search results have been on par with Google for most people's purposes for a while, but that hasn't helped them. To compete with Google on search you have to do to Google what Google did to AltaVista: be noticeably better, consistently…

Exactly! Thank Cthulhu for competition.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#47
post #28

A minor observation, but I appreciate how they show the user highlighting text in one of their search results for truffles. Having done some usability work and watched users work on their computers, highlighting what is being read is such a common behavior, it's cool to see Google so in touch.

Do users still highlight when using a trackpad instead of a mouse?

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#48
post #21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but at this point, Google is literally synonymous with search. Android, however is still much less recognizable than the iPhone. Then again, marketing to that many people is something of a science, and I admit to not understanding it well.

Google may be synonymous with search. However, huge portions of the population have not integrated search into their lives as tightly as you and I have (Google says I've done 19k searches and averaged about 550 a month last year -- I rather doubt my typical customer has). Evangelizing search to the rest of the population makes Google serious amounts of money -- that is one reason they've been dumping a lot into adver…

Thanks for that link. That's a huge change for 2009! I believe that hanging around tech people gives one the false impression that Google has saturated the search market.

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#49
post #45

Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…

Tell us why you think Bing is as good as Google.

Bing had my site indexed 4 days before google, and updates it more regularly! That's about all I can think of

Re: Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad

#50
post #42

Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…

Bing being merely as good as Google means the Bing team haven't done enough. That means they have to compete on brand, and that's really hard since Google has a stronger brand. Yahoo's search results have been on par with Google for most people's purposes for a while, but that hasn't helped them. To compete with Google on search you have to do to Google what Google did to AltaVista: be noticeably better, consistently…

It sucks for Google too. The very last thing they want is the commoditization of search. Resisting brand advertising is likely a result of wanting to limit the perception of being a commodity. They'd MUCH rather have the perception that they don't need to compete on brand, that they're technically much better than everyone else.

The fact that they're doing lifestyle branding is actually a pretty bad sign. It means they feel Bing represents a real threat.

Lucky for Google, Microsoft sucks at advertising. Imagine if they had to compete with someone who was as good at lifestyle branding as Coca-Cola.

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