But then I noticed who the main advertiser was:

Dum-dum-DAAAAA!  Is it a coincidence that Google is spending money on ComedyCentral.com on the night that Jon Stewart smacks down Apple?  I THINK NOT!*

(I actually do have a Google search story.  It’s here.  People my age love sharing, and love autobiographing in ways that take less than five minutes, so this ad is perfect for the ComedyCentral.com audience)

For those of you who may have missed it, you can see the full Daily Show episode on the website.

Oh, and while you’re in a mood to be amused, there’s a great writeup on Valleywag about the Deadly Curse of AOL.  AOL are in the news today because they sold ICQ to the Russians for much less than they paid for it.  There goes another chunk of Internet nostalgia, sold to the Russians (Livejournal was sold to Russian company SUP last year).

I think the REAL curse of AOL is that they can’t permanently assign sales people who can grow with the agencies and brands they work with.  My team has been through a half-dozen AOL reps and team members who were supposed to be permanently assigned to our agency.  And every time we would have a big team meeting, and explain our clients and our goals for our campaigns, and discuss opportunities.  Our reps would get the hang of working with us, learn about what we needed, and call us for fire sale remnant inventory on homepage opportunities.  Then the reps would be laid off or reassigned, and we would have to start again.  I think I could probably find my current AOL rep in my Outlook, but I’d have to check with my AOL Search rep (who, thankfully, has been a stable presence) to be sure.  THAT is the curse of AOL.  Maybe re-org’ing their sales department will give us a trusted rep we can work with for years.  Meanwhile, I’ll be calling our last set of reps – they all took the time to understand my business needs, and now that they’re at new partners/publishers/vendors, I’ll see if I can give them the budget.

*Actually, I think it is a coincidence that Google is advertising on ComedyCentral.com the night Jon Stewart insinuated Apple was the iGestapo. But I thought saying otherwise would be more dramatic