Google's resistance to advertising its own services -- ironic given the boatloads of money the company has made on advertising revenue -- is legendary, and that reputation is not likely to change now that ads for T-Mobile's Google-branded smart phone, the G1 or "G-Phone," are finally hitting the air. The campaign, spearheaded by T-Mobile and its ad agency, Publicis in the West, is Google-like in its approach. Unlike Apple's strategy for the iPhone, there were no teaser ads-a conscious decision to let the hype do the talking. The first ads will roll this week as the phone becomes available in …

Microsoft Research has announced a new seach engine interface that will allow users to personalize, order and share their search results. U Rank lets you reorder your searches, add notes, personalize the results and share them with friends. U Rank tries to give a new twist to search by focusing on collaboration and sharing. It keeps a history of all your searches, which can be shared if the user desires. It also allows you to add results from one search to another, or create lists of search results, thereby highly personalizing your Web browsing, and sharing all of it …

Advertisers of all kinds are expected to increase their focus on less expensive Web advertising as the economy heads south, but condom manufacturer Trojan has its own reasons for doing so. The company has long struggled to address its topic delicately in TV commercials, and even so many TV networks still refuse to carry Trojan commercials. So the company is launching a major online initiative. Located at EvolveOneEvolveAll.com, which is part of Viacom's MTV network, the effort centers on about a dozen pieces of unique content created by up-and-coming artists, all of which address common excuses for not engaging …

Is there any advertising forecast that can't be lowered these days? Apparently not, for even as Barack Obama breaks every political advertising record known to man or beast, media research firm Borrell Associates is significantly lowering its 2008 political ad spending projections -- including for online spending. At the beginning of 2008, Borrell predicted online political ad spending would reach the $20 million mark this year. That number has now been lowered to about $17.7 million. Borrell has also lowered its estimate of political spending for all media in 2008, from $4.8 billion to $2.27 billion. It would …

A Connecticut court has effectively given its blessing to a local high school that declined to renew the contract of an English teacher for using his MySpace page to conduct inappropriate communications with his students. The communications weren't sexual in nature, unless you count the teacher mocking a pair of students named Repko and Ashley for "sittin in a tree K I S S I N G ... HA HA HA!!!!! LOL." He also posted his own (dreadful) poetry decrying the war in Iraq, and other items that crossed the line of a formal student/teacher relationship. The teacher …

Woe to those who work at Yahoo. Wired reported late Monday that analysts predict the company will be forced to cut to* about 12,000 employees to stay afloat thanks to the decline in premium display ad sales. Considering the cause, a vast number of those cuts could come from the ad sales department. The announcement could come as early as today, and the cuts will likely affect several areas. Some suggest employees in search could get the ax -- particularly because of Yahoo's pending outsourcing deal with Google, and the company's large number of employees in search R&D. Most …