Google Scores on Super Bowl Sunday

Google broke with its longstanding tradition of not advertising its search engine on national television when it ran this attention-grabbing and yet understated 60-second spot during the Super Bowl on Sunday Feb 7th. The Super Bowl is the most-watched TV event of the year (stats for this year put the number at 106.5 million viewers) with 30-second commercials selling for upwards of $3 million. This was Google's first-ever Super Bowl ad buy. Called "Parisian Love," the commercial was based on a series of YouTube videos called Search Stories that Google has posted over the past three months. "We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told CNN. "We liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience." Predictably, the ad has inspired all sort of parodies including one with a pro-life message called Parisian Oops and another making fun of Tiger Woods. To see the ad, click the arrow above. And if you're older than 12 and need to watch it more than once to catch it completely, don't worry--you're not alone.