Google Is Going Postal In Sweden

An anonymous reader writes "Google will start to collaborate with the Swedish Postal Service (Swedish original) to sell direct marketing to small businesses, both in the form of fliers (delivered by the Swedish Postal Service) and keyword advertising in Google Search. The area of distribution for the fliers is selected in Google Maps. Google will also will provide templates for the design of the fliers.The idea was concieved within the Swedish Postal Service."

Comments

Re:That's all we need

[houghi]

You just put a robots.txt file outside your door.

In Belgium you do that by registering on the http://www.robinsonlist.be/

At least their spam filter still works

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

I never thought I'd see the day where they would encourage junk mail. As a Swede; my "Please no advertisements" sticker on the mailbox is generally respected (it has to be, by law). But the stuff that's directly addressed to me, i.e. that which is handed out by the Postal Service, is more difficult to get rid of. "Hooray no spam here!" indeed...

Re:At least their spam filter still works

[migla]

It's because it's not quite "the swedish postal service" any more. It's "Posten AB" ("AB" would be "Inc." in english?) now, albeit the majority of stock is owned by the state, I believe.

In the good old socialist days the postal service didn't have to turn a profit. They could hire the "sick and the lame", you didn't have to be overworked, you could send a crystal bowl in wrapping paper without it braking and there used to be a department at one of the terminals where employees would investigate where any incomplete address, to anywhere in the world might be. Letters to some village somewhere in Africa that were missing a postal code would be routed via this terminal in Stockholm.

All of that isn't very efficient, of course and paid for with taxes, but In my opinion it was nice enough to warrant paying for it. (or rather, if I'd earned taxed income, I'd happily paid for a socialist postal service. I don't believe they tax social security benefits)

I used to work for Posten AB for a while before being sacked for not showing up for work for a month or two. Once we were sent on a conference trip on a real slow boat to Helsinki town.

Our boss held a pep-talk about efficiency and profitability. I asked if they'd shut down the postal service if we weren't profitable. The boss said "Of course not! The postal service is an institution!" I let the rest of the argument be implicit.

I don't think they've privatized the postal service even in the US, the beacon of free-marketeers.

Re:Please not more fliers... please!

[vegiVamp]

Have you tried simply putting up a "No flyers please" sticker ? Worked wonders for me. I now have about one box of trash paper every two months or something.

The only ones who ignore it are delivery people who don't speak dutch (you may have heard something about Belgium's language struggles :-p ) and the occasional politician's zealots during election periods. Neither of those flyers elicits my further business, and I've made this clear to the originators on several occasions.

Re:Going postal?

[IBBoard]

Not always. Pratchett's Going Postal didn't have much killing (unless you include the indirect deaths attributed to Moist von Lipwig's con artist antics that Mr Pump counts up)

Re:Going postal?

[somersault]

I think the pun in both cases is that the phrase "going postal" is well known these days for going on a killing spree, but in fact in said cases it simply refers to the postal service. Kind of an anti-pun.

Re:Huh, Google getting help?

[xaxa]

Language specific ads are just a case of region specific ads.

For example, if I search "parcel" using Google (which knows I'm in the UK) all the adverts are for British companies, showing prices in pounds. If I search "paket" on Google.se the adverts are all for Swedish companies.

Re:Please not more fliers... please!

[TheGratefulNet]

in the US, you cannot opt-out of receiving physical junk-mail.

I tried asking my local postman if he would even do me a favor and just NOT cram my inbox with paper ads and 'newspapers'. he said he'd love to oblige but he'd get in trouble since he's PAID to deliver that crap.

that's the problem. the PO thinks they have been paid to do a service and they're not smart enough to realize that the receiver SHOULD be able to xoff (heh) the mail he does not ever read or want! clearly, there is mass mail and unicast regular old mail. when papers come, they are never confused with personal unicast email yet the PO will refuse to NOT deliver that to you.

talk about opt-out lists all you want, they simply don't work in the US. companies find ways to work around it.

it makes me sick seeing how much truly wasted paper comes into my mailbox. sick that there's not a thing I can do to stop it, either.

other countries, yes. you can put a sticker on your mailbox. not in the united states of corporate america. peoples' rights always (now) come after those of corporations.

Re:How's this news?

[delinear]

Google is the middleman.

Re:Huh, Google getting help?

[Combatso]

The ONLY benefactor is google.

I don't think thats the word you looking for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefactor

Perhaps beneficiary is what you meant to say. I don't usually call out spelling/grammatical errors, but the wrong word here changes the entire meaning of your statement... aside from that, I agree with you.