Google Abandons "Search Engine" Moniker

Reporting in the NY Times today, Miguel Helft captures the frank admission of Andy Rubin, whose title, paradoxically, is VP Engineering:

“There is an opportunity to make some margin on the unit sales, but that’s not the objective here,” Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering in charge of the Android technology, said during a press conference at Google’s headquarters here. “Our primary business is advertising.” [emphasis added]

Interesting, I think, that the core notion of needing a big agency to handle your advertising continues to erode with advances in technology. The advantage is heading toward the smaller, more nimble agencies with great outside technological and graphic design resources that they can tap, but need not own. Overhead disappears. The focus shifts to creative strategy and administration.

Clients certainly benefit, but it is admittedly a bewildering time to run an agency, with everything in the game changing seemingly at once.

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