Google's 90-Second Spots Promote Chrome Browser

Google launched a campaign on national TV last night to boost usage of its Chrome browser. The series of 90-second spots, via Bartle Bogle Hegarty, have a simple objective.

"The browser's probably the most important piece of software on anyone's computer, but a lot of people, the people we're targeting with these TV spots, don't know what a browser is," Robert Wong, creative director of the Google Creative Lab, tells the New York Times' Claire Cain Miller.

Google launch the browser in 2008; it runs a distant third to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (55.1% of the market) and Firefox (21.6%), with a 11.9% share. Apple's Safari browser is fourth at 7.2%. The two leaders' share dropped somewhat in April, according to CNET's Stephen Shankland, while Chrome and Safari gained traction.

"The problem for both Firefox and Chrome is how are they going to convince customers that they have a significantly better product [than Microsoft, whose browser is preloaded on Windows-based machines], worth the hassle of actually going and downloading something that's new and different," Harvard Business school professor David B. Yoffie says.

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Cain Miller writes that Google's solution is to "tug at people's heartstrings with emotional ads about what they can do with Chrome." One spot, "Dear Sophie," shows a dad using Chrome to digitally scrapbook his daughter's life as she grows up.

CNET blogger Chris Matyszczyk says that the ads are Apple-like and not "very Googlish" in the way that they "tug at your heartstrings so that you can get in touch with your inner browser fascination."

He remains wary of the surfeit of "gizmos" gushing out of Google and says he won't download Chrome. Still, he seems to think it has taken the right approach. Somewhat.

"How charming that the company is now embracing TV ads as if they were cousins who had moved abroad a decade ago," Matyszczyk writes. "And, in a fit of heartfelt intelligence, Google understands that listing the rational virtues of a browser won't get real people to pay attention."

He also commends it for a spot that supports Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" program that aims to provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens. The commercial, which debuted on "Glee," is "an amazing compilation of the project," writes Ben Parr on Mashable. "People will recognize Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, Kathy Griffin and even Woody from Toy Story, but the commercial also contains messages from a wide variety of people of different ages and backgrounds."

An acquaintance who has joined a digital agency emailed me yesterday and said he'd like to pick my (very) grey matter because I was writing about the industry "before digital was digital, or even interactive." Indeed, have you even heard the word "videotex" used in polite conversation?

One of the most exciting things I remember from the early days of the commercial Internet was the development of browsers such as Mosaic and its cousin, Netscape Navigator. Word spread like wildfire whenever a new iteration of a beta came out.

I was in awe the first time I heard audio on my MacPlus. Then came excruciatingly slow video. Nowadays, when I download a new release of a browser, such as Firefox 4.0, I really couldn't tell you what's different from the 3.7.16 I had been using except that some add-ons I've added (but seldom use) don't function yet.

Browsers have by and large become a commodity. Change is no longer breakthrough. It's not only incremental, but also overwhelmingly fecund. And, for most people, browsers are a matter of habit and circumstance rather than choice. Or worse, as Google itself found out when it took a videocam to Times Square and asked people what a browser is. Variations on "I call it a search engine" are the most prevalent response.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports this morning that Google has rolled out to Mac users a pre-developer experimental build of its forthcoming Chrome Canary browser that Windows users have been playing with for a while.

"But why not just use [its open-source brother] Chromium ?" its open-source brother, asks Samuel Gibbs? "Because Chrome comes packing a few extras built in, like the internal Flash plug-in and other bits and pieces," he answers.

I don't know about you, but "internal Flash plug-in" is not exactly a call-to-action for me. Wake me up when I can use my browser to design and produce my own smartphone. 

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