• The New York Times, Tuesday, January 3, 2012 11 AM

Google made its first push into advertising with a Super Bowl ad in 2010 about a young couple falling in love, then went on to run other advertising and hosting Google-themed conferences in an effort to extend its brand to the offline world.

Besides touting Chrome browser and the Google Plus social network, the ads are also part of Google’s mission, led by Larry Page, its co-founder and chief executive, to pare down its product offering and make Google products more attractive, intuitive and integrated with one another. Said Lorraine Twohill, Google’s VP for global marketing, “As we got bigger, we had more competition, more products, more messages to consumers, so we needed to do a bit more to communicate what these products are and how you can use them,” she said.

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