Some on Madison Avenue are concerned about Google's plans - recently, it's been hiring New York-base media buyers - to expand into the media planning and buying business, what the ad agencies consider their turf, writes MediaPost. Though Google says its efforts are merely a test limited to print, it has also hinted that the scope of that test might expand to other offline media as it expands the realms of exploration in pursuit of a core mission - "using Google's technology to serve relevant, targeted ad messages on behalf of advertisers and agencies," as MediaPost puts it.

Apparently, industry execs are worried about Google's rapid growth, high capitalization and vast amounts of available cash, and unexpected expansion into areas outside its search business.

But Google execs say their efforts into media services are being misunderstood, as Chris LaSala, Google's so-called head of agencies, explains to MediaPost: "I exist to make sure that Google, as an organization, is doing things to the benefit of the agency community."

LaSala says the media buyers it hires won't be functioning as buyers per se. "It's not to do media planning and buying. Our mission is around technology and scale. The goal is to do that to the benefit of anyone involved: agency, direct customer, big customer, and small customer," LaSala says.