Google as shorthand for "the Internet"

I've been wondering for a while how it came to pass that "Google" became visual shorthand for "the Internet" amongst advertisers.

The current campaign for Thomson holidays exhorts holidaymakers to use "our Google Maps" (which turns out to be a slightly customised version of what is very clearly Google's Google Maps). Mobile phone companies in particular, when they started wanting us to know that we could access the web on our phones, showed us phones with Google on them. Here's another one.

So I'm intrigued by the sudden cultural shift implied by Nokia's latest online ad for the N800 (left), a phone with Internet access, majoring on the BBC website and Flickr and MySpace and Wikipedia without a mention of Google. "Take the Internet to new places", it says. Or, in other words - not just Google search.

Google has an incredibly powerful brand (BBC) that for the last couple of years has been semiotically synonymous with the Internet. Assuming, not unreasonably, that advertisers are on the cutting edge of understanding cultural significance, that psychological dominance of what people mean by the Internet may be coming to an end as consumers are considered able to accept more nuanced symbols of the web.

Comments

[James]

The reason that Nokia is not using the Google Brand may be because of T-Mobile's wallpapering of the google brand on there advertising for web and talk.

[weaverluke]

When millions of people identify your brand with the Internet itself, you know you have a decent business. Whether or not Google can continue to convince the masses that they are "the Internet" will play a huge part in determining their future fortunes.

However, it's also intriguing to note that the growing privacy concerns around Google provide them with the inverse challenge of convincing people that they are not too omniscient for their users' comfort—when striving for omniscience kind of goes with the territory of trying to be "the Internet". This would seem to pose Google with something of a strategic and branding conundrum.

There's money in that there identity—we just don't quite know where yet.

[Chris Rimmer]

Not sure I follow your point about Thomson. They've added maps by integrating Google Maps into their site. How else should they describe it? Just "our maps"? By explicitly using the phrase "Google Maps" people know what functionality they are going to get.

[Seamus McCauley]

James - quite possibly, though it's not limited to T-mobile I think?

Hi Luke - yes, Google is forever faced with the conundrum of how to leverage its vast resources of user intelligence without a branding meltdown. I assume they'll find some way of helping people monetise their own digital identity that makes it all look user-controlled and take a huge cut.

Chris - I suppose, to turn the question around, I might ask whether you'd expect any other provider of basic functionality to find their brand automatically plastered all over their clients' marketing? Intel insists on it, Google seems to be granted it as a matter of course, but a lot of consumer brands go out of their way to strike white label deals that don't make explicit the "powered by" element.