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

Huh, Google getting help?

[cappp]

Completely opposite to what I expected. Seems the Postal Service is helping Google reach out to businesses to increase their use of keyword searches rather than Google helping a struggling Postal system - at least that's what the end of the article seems to suggest. Perhaps a testbed for a new business model?

Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Buying the keywords you are less familiar with. – Many people are interested in an online presence, but there are only a few percent of Sweden's 500 000 small businesses that use keywords in their marketing, says Google's Country Manager Sweden Stina Honkamaa.

Re:That's all we need

[Bromskloss]

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

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...

Real-world spam is evil.

[slasho81]

What about do no evil? Junk mail is very evil.