Google has always kept their search homepage free of clutter, unneeded text and of course ads. Well today I just noticed they added a link promoting the new T-Mobile G1 – the first android-powered phone.
When you click on the link it takes you to a splash page that lives within the Google.com domain, however that page is basically a shell to get you to click over to T-Mobiles website. I guess Google felt sending a visitor directly to T-Mobile from their homepage was pushing it – but man imaging the link-juice from that link if they did?
I am not against a company promoting its goods and services, especially on a website they own, but the Google.com homepage has always been a sanctuary for simplicity. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
nicce… i guess the want to make a lil money so they aren’t having the same issues as Yahoo.. the whole laying off people…
I kind of have an issue with this. Are they going to sell this placement to other advertisers?
They do that a lot…they sell chrome on orkut, analytics on searches and a lot of other crap… :)
They did the same thing with Chrome when it launched.
“I kind of have an issue with this. Are they going to sell this placement to other advertisers?”
Err, I doubt it – it’s their homepage they can do what they want with it.
Chrome and the G1 are completely different – Chrome is a stand-alone Google product, Android in a OS that lives on another companies device.