• by September 21, 2005

Now here's one to blog about. CNET's News.com broke a story on Monday regarding Google's upcoming partners forum, eerily dubbed "Zeitgeist '05." The conference, which the irrepressible Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch found out about and commented on, will gather nearly 400 executives, bloggers, and a few members of the elite press like James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly and Malcom Gladwell from The New Yorker. Dates are Oct. 25-27.

But get this: Google has issued a gag order on the participants -- which include Yahoo! Chief Executive Terry Semel, MSN Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi, InterActive Corp's Chief Executive Barry Diller, and Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble. How preposterous is that? How can you gather dynamic executives from some of the most influential companies in the world, along with a bunch of bloggers and a handful of journalists, and expect them to keep their mouths shut?

No way. Not possible. And not likely. Come on, Google.

And even more amusing -- at least to Microsoft, which has at least two representatives participating in Zeitgeist -- Google appears to have copied the format and program of the software giant's annual Strategic Account Summits. Microsoft's Summits drew executives from Yahoo! and other competitors/partners, and featured many of the same speakers as the Google lineup. While Microsoft invited the press to the 2004 SAS -- including this here Minute -- it closed access in 2005, citing advertiser concerns.

From the Minute's vantage point, the most useful part about attending SAS was the intense exposure to MSN's priorities for the year, and to other parts of Microsoft. Attending SAS also afforded us direct access to the company's executives, along with informal discussions with marketer/agency participants. Sure, there was plenty of pre-cooked news and elaborately planned presentations, but on the whole, the thing was useful. You can never underestimate the power of in-person confabs.

We are kicking ourselves that we didn't pounce on this Zeitgeist thing earlier, as a source sent us the documents about it last week. We were a wee bit busy cranking out Media and OMMA magazines, and the Online All Stars supplement, along with planning for the Creative Media Awards. Then there's the OMMA East Conference and Expo Sept. 27-28. We hope your calendars are full, too. On Zeitgeist, perhaps it's just a cleverly calculated move on Google's part to place a gag on coverage, fueling all the more talkin' and bloggin'.