• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 23, 2015

Google turned its search engine home page -- google.com -- into a promotion to raise awareness for an initiative spearheaded by StoryCorps, an independently funded nonprofit with a mission to record and preserve in the cloud the stories of people's lives.

Through the search engine, StoryCorps is urging Americans to interview a grandparent or elder, using a smartphone app that can send the recording to the archives at the Library of Congress.

Google donated the space on the search engine home page. "There is no paid component to these partnerships," a Google spokesperson told Search Marketing Daily.

Click through the google.com tagline -- "Grandparents have the best stories. Record your grandparents' story this Thanksgiving." -- on google.com to a video posted on YouTube. The video suggests that viewers download the StoryCorps mobile app to help "create the largest collection of voices ever gathered in human history and preserve it at the Library of Congress forever."

Made possible by a partnership between StoryCorps and Google, the movement asks people to "pause, listen, and honor the voices of a generation by interviewing a loved one this week."

This is not the first time Google has partnered with a non-profit that has shared values with Google for a promotion on its home page. For example, Google worked with One World Peace for International Peace Day in the past. 

Google also has used google.com on occasion to advertising its hardware product to introduce Nexus, and Chromebook. In 2010, the search engine also experimented with a stunning image of a lake that meets the base of red majestic mountains, some hidden by clouds that turned into an REI ad.

REI, had the opportunity to play a "Where are you?" game with the viewer of the search engine home page. It created an opportunity for the retailer to send the viewer to a page that would price the travel, name the opportunities offered, and list the types of gear required to make the trip successful. Marissa Mayer, then VP of search products and user experience at Google, explained the feature to choose a background for the Google home page.