Google’s land grab turns ‘old school’

While Google has achieved and maintains their dominance of the search marketing landscape, they have been investing countless resources in building products and services to get their tentacles into nearly every media and marketing platform. Google TV Ads brings the Google ad sales marketplace to Dish Network and NBCU inventory. Google’s mobile operating system, Android, will launch later this month in the T-Mobile G1 phone. Google Apps is their foray into the SaaS game. The Chrome browser launched a few weeks ago and we’ve all had plenty of time to play with Gmail and iGoogle.

The runaway success of Google’s AdWords and AdSense was built on word of mouth, an accurate and efficient consumer experience and business results for advertisers. But, as Google continues to expand their business and consumer products some observers and company insiders think the company ought to break from tradition and produce some old fashioned advertising to help promote and distinguish their products from competitors. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has already engaged with Wieden + Kennedy and Taxi for some project work.

As Google continues their media and marketing land grab it will be interesting to see how Madison Avenue will receive a ‘frienemy’ in need of some old-school agency services.