A mite impersonal

Google has customer issues. While it continues to win the battle for the hearts of search engine users, many advertising clients are turned off by the search giant perceived as inattentive to marketers - its main client base - and apt to steal agency business by attempting to go direct. A CNN piece on the trend cited a Jack Myers study of 200 large advertisers that placed Google fifth, three placed behind arch rival Yahoo.

This in itself isn't alarming, as Google placed seventh the year before. What got Myers' eyebrows to arch was Google's rating in "responsiveness and accessibility." It ranked 18th, down seven places from last year.

Google has relied on automated order taking more than other firms, insulating itself from the overhead costs of large sales and marketing organizations, but also forgoing relationships that other sites enjoy with advertisers.

One factor unstated in the CNN piece is an attitudinal factor increasingly perceived in marketing circles - one that once afflicted Yahoo and AOL - that the Google people hold themselves a bit above the industry. Google, very much an engineering-run company, has been hiring the best of the best in related science and engineering fields, luring them with the idea that they are changing the world, democratizing knowledge, and thereby social structures. This hasn't left much room for a relative sense of individual respect for the people paying the bills.

The combination of the "ATM" style of service - coupled with a staff that hold marketing and sales pretty far down the list of high status functions - led to a widespread industry perception that Google tolerates its customers to the extent it can take their money. CNN's canvas of industry buyers painted a rather dismal portrait of an overly automated firm trying to poach its customers' clients, adding insult to the injury with its haughtiness.