It’s nothing personal, it’s just business: Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan reports that Google is apparently advertising its Chrome browser in search advertisements on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Sullivan says that, although it’s not unheard of for other search engine companies to run advertisements on Google, Google has never reciprocated until now. The search giant apparent bypassed Bing-based search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and simply ran search ads that appeared for queries including "Google chrome," "chrome," or even "browser."
Additionally, Sullivan reports seeing similar advertisements on Yahoo. He notes that "There’s a chance someone else might be running this ad, of course. But I don’t know of any Google Chrome affiliate programs out there, which means there’s little incentive for anyone else but Google to be doing this."
The Chrome advertising could be a further sign of more aggressive advertising from Google, which recently rolled out its first TV ad during this month’s Super Bowl. Such an uptick in advertising, analysts say, could be a response to the pending completion of the partial merger between the company’s two chief competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo.
