The Google Experience During The Super Bowl

Google just ran a Super Bowl ad, something Eric Schmidt said in a tweet yesterday means that Hell has frozen over. Regardless of the current atmospheric conditions in the underworld, one of the more subtle things about the Google ad that caught my attention was a mention in the Google blog that, “our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact.”

Google and its proponents have always made a point of emphasizing the user experience of search – that’s why the Google start page isn’t covered in widgets and ads, and they’ve even gone farther recently with making everything except the search box itself not appear until the searcher does something else on the page.

I won’t speculate on whether Google advertising during the Super Bowl is an indication of changing markets, fear of Bing, or simply a bid at making the 2011 “Best Super Bowl Ads Ever Aired In All Of History” list, but I will say that the continuing focus on the experience of the people using Google is likely one of the reasons they’re so popular.

Watch all of the Google “Search Stories”