Google gets into the political arena.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-googltics25mar25,1,1251038.story?coll=la-headlines-business

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/05/63557

We saw in class that Google sells certain keywords to merchants such as Ithaca Calendar Clocks and shopping website like eBay and Amazon. However, sellers and traders are not the only ones buying Google “AdWords”, politicians are seeing the vast reach of internet advertising and jumping in. Back in 2004, a group of bloggers pushed Kerry’s campaign website to the top of the search results for the keyword “waffles”. Capitalizing on this internet prank, the Kerry campaign purchased a variety of keywords on Google and linked them to the Kerry campaign site. These words ranged from the mentioned “waffles” to words like “miserable failure” (referring to a Google-bombing involving George Bush) and “George W. Bush”.

Today, a Google search for the keyword “election 2008” brings up the sponsored link to Barack Obama’s campaign website. As a business Google has realize the potential profit to be made by selling campaign advertisement and has began to actively reach out to campaigns. Just recently, Google established a “political sales team” and sent three of the team’s members to deliver a seminar about using Google’s products for political purposes. Although this by itself is not very surprising, the contents of the seminar were. In addition to lecturing about AdWords, Google also delivered a speech about what videos resonate on its newly acquired YouTube website and how to propel websites up the search engine rankings.