It was interesting Google inserted their new webclips feature into Gmail. Defaulted on, no asking for permissions. And then, last night, I started seeing advertisements, like the one above. Even more interesting, and so UnGoogly.
I know it’s absurd to raise it as a possibility in light of the latest earnings, the overwhelming presumption of world domination and monster growth. But I keep wondering, as I did a few months ago with the incessant promotion of the toolbar: Is Google worried about not meeting expectations, and are they starting to get more aggressive to drive growth? I get the sense they expect and want to double revenues next year. As we all know, the law of large numbers says that is harder to do that when you get to revenues in the 10 digit realm.
Of course, the last time I wrote something like this was followed by Google reporting mind-blowing earnings growth for their last quarter. But, like I said, the increasingly aggressive behavior seems so UnGoogly that you have to wonder.
[...] Twice in the last three months or so, I’ve posted in the same vein, albeit with much less specificity, prompted by the heavy promotion of the toolbar, and the default-on insertion of ads for the Google Clips feature in the Google Reader (admittedly, the second being a minor, minor issue in terms of traffic and thus money). [...]