Why Google Won the Super Bowl

The enormity of advertising during the Super Bowl is nothing new.  For $3 million, you could have your very own spot amongst a select few companies which decided that their money is worth more on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.  While the regulars were there, Bud Light, Go Daddy and Doritos, there was one new company this year that had many wondering what they would bring: Google.

You see, Google doesn’t advertise on television.  It has made billions of dollars figuring out how to best advertise on the internet, so why start spreading the gospel of Google during the most expensive time of the year?  From the moment that I heard they were going to have an ad, I was intrigued.  How would they do it?  Would they only show the search engine, or would they also show Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps and YouTube?  Would they try to introduce Google Wave to the masses and show us why it’s the future of communication?  I had no idea, but I was very very interested.

The opening shot hooked me.  A blinking cursor in a search box.  Not everyone would know what it was immediately, but I knew, since I was anticipating this ad more than any other:

What came next was nothing short of genius.  Playing off a Parisian love story, Google’s search engine wafted us through a life story of a young man who meets a girl in Paris while studying abroad and leads us all the way through their long distance relationship, to their eventual marriage and the birth of their first child…all through the search engine.

We all know that Google is the top search engine in the world.  What this company has been able to do with its invention is incredible.  It has taken on titans such as Microsoft and Yahoo! and yet still maintains itself as a company for us, the internet users.  Microsoft’s Bing search engine is certainly a well done site, but it continues to struggle to take market share away from Google.  With this Super Bowl ad, Google may have ended the fight.

The single greatest aspect of this ad is that it was able to bring us through the story while never leaving Google.  And that in itself is something incredible; it showed us how to use Google and what it looks like working for us.  It’s not a Snickers ad that shows Betty White getting tackled during a football game, it’s not a beaver playing a violin and then using a job search site, and its certainly not a baby talking about trading stocks online.

It’s simply Google being Google.