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Google, the company that makes money from online advertisements have advertised for the first time in print here in India. The advertisement is a full page back-cover ad for Google's internet browser Chrome. I got to see the ads in the Bangalore editions of Mint and The Economic Times. The picture that you see here is from Mint.

An internet browser is an interesting product, anyone who has an internet connection uses one. To be fair most I know still use Internet Explorer just because it was already there when they got their computers. Their usage of computers and internet did not familiarize them with other browsers. None of the websites or applications aske/forced them to install a different browser. Tell them to go to the internet and they promptly open up Internet Explorer; it might so happen that www.google.com is their default homepage too. So unless they were influenced/bulldozed by other users of the same computer its quite unlikely they would shift to other browsers. Going by analytics if majority of internet traffic is still coming from IE, there's maybe that much of a strong need to educate people about the benefits of other browsers. A large format print advertisement in newspapers from a very well known brand I think does that job very well.

A couple of years back Google advertised outdoors for their SMS search. It did get my attention but I never encountered a situation where I had to use it. One could also compare it with the full page ad that Yahoo did a year ago. There are other instances too where internet companies have advertised in traditional media to connect and find newer audience.

If it's from Google it must be good - was the reaction to the ad from someone who had never used Chrome before. This ad is a good start - I hope they follow it up with what makes it simple, safe and secure.