• Associated Press via Miami Herald, Monday, October 15, 2007 10 AM

While Google sells advertising services to thousands of other businesses, it has a tendency to skimp on marketing itself. The Internetsearch leader, with sales of over $30 billion in ads since 2001, has become a household name and Web powerhouse without buying much media. "It's almost as if they have this cultural allergy to advertising," says Mark Hughes, author of "Buzzmarketing," which tracks unconventional brand-building.

As a plus, the money is freed up for engineers, hardware and other resources that boost its bottom line -- and sent it stock into the stratosphere. In some ways, it is an archetype of an Internet-driven age that has also seen outfits like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook become pop culture icons with little if any advertising. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin eschewed the ad excesses of the bubble years.

But they have remained cheap even as their company sits on $12.5 billion in cash, believing that the austere approach will become increasingly common as advertisers learn to better target consumers. "We are at an inflection point that could radically change theway marketing is done," says David Lawee, Google's marketing chief.

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