Super Bowl 44 had a good game and terrible ads. I watch little to no NFL football throughout the year. NCAA football is my preferred format and Super Bowl 44 was the first NFL game I watched all year. One reason I watch it is for the ads. Much like last year, the ads were horrible again this year. There were a few that I did like. The beaver violinist was kind of funny and then there was the Google ad everyone is talking about.

The Google ad felt/looked very similar to an iPhone/Apple commercial. Apple has been able to turn demonstrations of how their products work into a full blown advertising campaigns. Google did the same thing last night with their search and it worked well, but they knew it would. The iPhone’s advertising campaign has for the most part been a hit and rightly so. In these ads the iPhone is simply used- that is the selling point. Apple made the iPhone so good, it sells itself. Google used the iPhone model and added a story if you will to their ad, but it show cased what they do best- search. Could Google be moving back to it’s core competencies?

My one big caveat with the commercial is why search? Google dominates search and the return on invest for that commercial would be considered low. Why didn’t Google advertise the Nexus One phone they have?

According to davianletter.com’s Dasan, Google owns 65% of the search market. Growth has slowed, but that should be expected once you completely start to dominate a market. Any gains in search would be incremental at this point and spending money on search advertising would carry a low ROI. This is not something new and I am sure Google knows this.

Did Google choose search for this TV spot because search is where they started and they are moving back to their core business? Google has been notorious for getting side tracked on projects outside of what they do best. It is often times a weakness I see cited by smart analysts. This very well could be, but could Google ripping off Apple’s iPhone ads be a signal of something greater? Like a war between the two companies. I think this war has already quietly begun.

Whatever the motive for the Google Super Bowl ad, it was good. It had a little of something for everyone and it was built on a foundation that they knew would work.