Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam
Google Zeitgeist 2007? If Google says so! After all, Google’s “methodology” is whatever Google says it is, to itself:
We studied the aggregation of billions of search queries people conducted on Google.
YAY? No Google rhyme, reason, or numerical quantification! Plenty of “Google Trends,” though, a Google Labs “entertainment” product:
Our graphs are based on aggregated data from millions of searches done on Google over time. And the results Google Trends displays are produced entirely by an automated formula. As an additional measure, Google Trends only returns results for terms that receive a significant amount of search traffic. The data Google Trends producres may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons, including data-sampling issues and a variety of approximations that Trends makes use of. We hope you find this service entertaining, but you propably don’t want to write your Ph.D. dissertation on this information.
REALLY? Google’s promise to organize ALL the world’s information so it is universally accessible and useful for ALL apparently does NOT apply to the information Google.com obtains, tracks and records, from its users!
Google cheerfully assures, though: “No matter how much changed throughout the course of the year, we found time to ponder a few age-old questions…’what is love?’
Age-old Google-centric questions are also alive and well this end of year holiday period…’how can we scam the U.S. population with shady AdWords sales schemes?’
The Google spin machine has outdone itself to end out 2007: “The Google Online Marketing Challenge!”
Remember Google’s $10 Local Search Pipe Dream: Slave Wages to Squeeze Yellow Pages? Of course not, because the “Google Local Business Referral Represenative Program” obviously went NO WHERE!
I underscored in August, if Google were to pay market wages for a national sales force calling on local businesses, it would not have the super-duper profit margins that make it the darling of Wall Street, and serve to finance its multi-billion dollar acquisitions. The Googley local ad sales “solution”? Offer slave wages to U.S. residents: $2-$10 for hours of labor intensive one-on-one cold-calling, prospecting, ad creative development and sales closing.
The Googleplex is so enamored with itself that it actually believes it can get away with solicting U.S. adults with a pennies on the dollar pitch. The Google Local Search $10 pipe dream, however, yielded nothing but lead feet!
NOW, Google is scamming the entire university world–professors and students of all genres– intruding upon the sacred realm of academia by hampering education and exploiting academics with the objective of hawking AdWords and recruiting Google customers!
The global winners and their professor will receive a trip to the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California to meet with the team that developed AdWords. In addition, regional winners and their professor will receive a trip to their local Google office.
All winning students, professors and institutions will receive recognition through the competition website and Google merchandise. All students will receive certificates of participation.
the business must receive and agree to the ‘Letter to Businesses’ (to be supplied to all students in their Competition Pack) and meet with the student group to explain its business and online marketing. Ideally the business will take an active interest in the campaign, such as providing feedback on the proposed campaign strategy, interim campaign results and campaign changes.
Google should be reasonably well established where the business has customers. With more people running search queries on Google, the likelihood is greater that your advertising will receive a sufficient amount of impressions and clicks. If Google is not well known in your region, you may have trouble competing on a level playing field with other, more established regions.
As Google’s flagship advertising product, setting up and running an AdWords account is simple. You and your students will have ample AdWords material in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors. All things equal, the more you know about AdWords, the more fun for your students and you, and the better their chances to win.
Student teams will receive voucher codes worth US $200 to run their three-week campaigns. Details on setup of competition AdWords accounts will be available in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors and students.
SUCH IS THE REAL GOOGLE ZEITGEIST: A $200 BILLION MARKET CAP CORPORATION CORRUPTING UNIVERSITY CURRICULUMS TO FURTHER BALLOON ITS OWN COFFERS.
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