Visiting my parents always opens my eyes to how other generations use the Internet. My parents, being in their 70′s, take pride in being able to do their own research via the search engines – so much pride they always show me their amazing findings and superb deals!

We gathered around their computer the other day as my father typed “european vacations” in the Google search bar. In the sponsored section, my father found his favorite site for booking vacations. But before he clicked their ad, he noticed underneath the paid ads (he now knows sponsored = paid) read “4 results stored on your computer”. So my father decides to click that instead and my mother’s mouth immediately dropped open as it led them to a document that was previously stored on their computer due to my mother’s own personal research.

“Why did Google find my documents?”  I saw the Google Desktop Icon next to those results and soon realized that my parents must have installed Google Desktop with one of their last program updates. I briefly explained what Google Desktop is and my mother became very nervous, thinking that anyone online searching for “european vacation” would have access to the documents on her computer. And, she continued questioning the fact that if Google had access to documents, would they also have access to her credit card numbers because she does a lot of online shopping? Before I could respond, my parents already had me searching for the program to uninstall it, to be reassured they didn’t have spies in their computer.

Google desktop allows you to search your computer just as easily as you would search the web. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, and web pages that you’ve viewed. To read about Google Desktop, you can visit http://desktop.google.com/features.html

Google states “Your Google Desktop index and copies of your files are currently stored only on your computer. The content is not shared with Google or anyone else without your explicit permission.”

What are they going to come up with next?

A close friend of mine purchased a new SUV over the weekend and we decided to use Google to research various aftermarket accessories.

I typed “Nissan rims” into the search bar but did not find what I was looking for. In an attempt to get more specific results, I entered “2008 Nissan Xterra rims”, and again I didn’t find what I was seeking. In my third attempt I typed “Chrome Rims” and was very surprised by the sponsored ads. The displayed paid ads were all for Nissan products. The various titles of the ads read “Nissan Parts”, “Shop Nissan Parts”, “Nissan Xterra Tire”, and other titles with the keywords “Nissan” or “Xterra”.

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Here is yet another way to demonstrate the power of the internet as an effective advertising portal. Traditional advertising portals such as TV, Radio and Print Newspapers are facing declines in the amount of ad revenues for their mediums while online advertising has been seeing increases year after year.  The trend is here to stay as internet advertising is ideally positioned to surpass radio ads by year’s end.  

In an article published on internetnews.com, it was noted that “Internet display advertising expenditures from January to June this year grew to $5.6 billion, up 17.7 percent from the same period a year ago, according to a report from TNS Media Intelligence.  In the same article it was said that “Television ads decreased 2.4 percent to $31.6 billion. Newspapers dropped 5.8 percent to $12.9 billion. And radio decreased 2.7 percent to $5.1 billion, a drop that matches an e-Marketer report earlier this month that, for the first time, online advertising will surpass radio advertising spending in the US.

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