Google pushes ‘Firefox with Google Toolbar’

You can’t buy this kind of advertising – literally. However, if you have the right partner, you can land your product on one of the most heavily traveled yet advertising-barren patches of real estate in either the virtual or physical worlds: the Google homepage.

That’s where the Firefox browser finds itself is this morning – and the placement cannot be a pleasant sight for the folks in Redmond. The ad reads: “ ‘Firefox with Google Toolbar,’ tabbed browsing, safer surfing.” (According to one online report, this has previously been visible to some California residents.)

Google has long touted its own services in this manner. However, the fact that it would devote such a relatively large display on what has always been a famously Spartan homepage to a campaign that also advances the fortunes of Firefox is another matter altogether. We have spent some time on this blog recently speculating about what it might take for Firefox to graduate from nuisance to genuine business threat for Internet Explorer and Microsoft.

Firefox Flicks won’t get it done.

A splashy presence on the Google homepage? … Marketers don’t even let themselves dream about such things.