Central Desktop ignites Google Adwords+Keyword conspiracy

By Vivek | December 6th, 2006 at 03:45 pm ET         

We might have searched on Google for the keyword ’spreadsheets’ to conveniently get to Google Docs and never realized that it is taking up the first spot in the Adwords ad results. Since I am not working on developing competing products to Google Docs and Office I never really cared about that.

But today, Isaac at Central Desktop posted an interesting article on how Google is taking up the top positions on the Google Adwords ads appearing on Google Search. So for most of the hot Office apps keywords including spreadsheet, documents, calendar you can see Google right on or near the top. I am not sure how the ad placement is working out internally ad Google, but the article is a precursor of the times to come as Google tries to establish its monopoly in the areas it operates.

Take another case of Google Checkout which has been promoting heavily to gain market share from PayPal. Google Checkout in now processing all Google checkout sales for free until end of 2007. Google had initially launched the holiday promotion that was supposed to last only till the end of 2006. According to traffic stats from Hitwise, after the launch of initial promotion, visits at Google Checkout have gone up by 158% for the week ending 11/25/06. It is still not sure how much those visits really mean in terms of revenue to Google. Still better results mean more promotions to grab even more market share from PayPal.

Anyhow the Central Desktop article is getting lot of attention and has been slashdotted.

Links:
CentralDesktop blog post