In a further sign that Google is indeed taking over the world, the US-based conglomerate has entered the retail dairy space with a new faster spreading Google butter.
While only graduates can purchase the product, Google offers overnight free degrees via the web ... so everyone can have the benefits of this product without the time and money wasted on a university education.
Obviously this isn't true, although some of it is.
Believe it or not, even if you were the world's most amazing web marketer but didn't have a degree Google wouldn't hire you - is that discriminatory?
And it is also true that entering "free degree" into Google does provide you with 24 million pages of results - how good is that!
When Google launched in 1998 it was a breath of fresh air in the neo-conservative search industry. My own company, like many others supported their approach; their fast sophisticated and massive search engine appeared to fly in the face of Yahoo and Microsoft in a way that allowed us all to feel we were supporting a mini revolution - and we were!
Problem is, we all got on the bandwagon to create a super Microsoft and now many of us don't see any competition on the horizon - at least not in English that is.
Were it true that Google had entered the retail dairy space; my belief is that even the slightest prospect of improved search ranking by buying the product would make it No.1 overnight and I would almost certainly recommend this action to my clients.
The reason is simple, Google rules the search world and the search world rules the web. The memorable line, "If you build it they will come" from the 1989 movie Fields of Dreams could not have been further from the truth in this context. So few people use a web address anymore that a movie about your company's website would more prudently use the catch line "If you build it and aren't listed on the front page of Google - they won't come."
I will be writing more on this next week but the impact of the Google phenomenon is that your home page means less than your lower level pages AND important products and services should have their own websites to be taken seriously.
In the meantime here are some interesting facts and figures to wow your colleagues:
Internetworldstats.com:
There are 1.5 billion internet users
Global penetration has reached 21.9%
Asian usage 579m is more than twice North American usage European usage 385m is also 50% more than North America
>> The US has lost control of the world's money AND the internet!
DomainTools.com:
There are 105.2m live domains [websites] 139,000 domains registered in the last 24 hours
>> The world really is at our web-front-door!
Where do search engines fit in?
Ninety per cent of Netizens used a search engine last month Almost 50% use a search engine daily; 60% use email daily Google has 61.5% - 141m monthly unique visitors, Yahoo! 20.9%, MS 9.2% [comScore June 2008]
More people turn to the internet than consult experts or family [Pew Internet] Almost 90% of Netizens search a business name instead of typing a web address
Blogging Statistics [searchingsolutions.com]
Twenty-eight per cent of all visits to blogs in 2007 resulted in some kind of action (email signup, contact form, etc.)
There are currently about 15.5 million active blogs (blogs updated within 90 days). Total blogs tracked by Technorati: 74 million There are 120,000 new blogs being created every day 3,000-7,000 new spam blogs (splogs) created per day.
Total blog posts created per day: 1.5 million
Thirty-six per cent of those blog posts were written in English
The Japanese language now boasts more blogs than another language (37%)
Web Browsers:
Firefox with 42.6% of the market is the most used web browser Internet Explorer 7 is a long way behind with 26.3%
Internet Explorer 6 is dropping slowly with 22.4%
What does all this mean for your business?
More on how to make this work for you next week!
Coming soon: Beating recession with the technology stick!