I was thinking, now would be the best time of all for Google to start an international advertising campaign. They can easily boast about their 18-month data prevention, carbon neutralility, universal search, webspam, YouTube etc

Instead the companie only seems advertise through AdWords/AdSense with the occasional advert for Google Maps elsewhere.

Google is increasinly being critisised and the company has the oppurtunity to do something about it.

I think they use their blogs for this PR. Maybe they think: it's enough if we convince the tech/ search people, they will spread the word... it worked for Google in the past.

That said I'm not a big fan of traditional company image ad campaigns, and I wonder if Google would want to associate themselves with those. Wired for instance is full of them – you'd think Shell is a hardcore hippie company by the way their ads look! And almost every car ad in Wired is talking about how great the car is for the environment (a notable exception: Hummer, which didn't mention the environment, at least in that issue).

Here's some of Shell's campaigns:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/shell-straw.jpg

http://blogoscoped.com/files/shell-flowers.jpg

Message: Don't throw anything away, you naive consumer! You're a risk to the environment, but we at Shell know how to solve your problem, because we're basically hardcore environmentalists.

Or take a look at this "Say No to No" campaign by Shell:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/shell-no.jpg

<<We've all heard a great deal about the challenges facing the energy industry in the 21st Century. But if we are facing an energy crisis, it isn't a crisis of oil and gas. We're confident not only that we will find more, and that we'll figure out ways to get to the supplies people tell us are unreachable, but that we'll also develop alternative energy sources to complement coal, gas and oil.

No, the real energy crisis lies in the inertia that afflicts all but a few of our species when faced with apparently overwhelming problems. In the willingness of the majority to say, "no", "never", "can't" and just give up.

Thankfully, the creative problem solvers at Shell have never taken "no" for an answer.>>

Message: We don't face an oil or gas crisis (we'll figure out ways to get supplies) – the crisis we're facing is all the 'nay'-sayers we're surrounded by (and thankfully, none of those work here with us).