Google Chrome Hoarding Gives a 404 Error

Update: Google has since fixed the broken links and also the hoarding has been replaced by some other ad from some other company. Cutting the Chai effect?

Unlike other web browsers Google Chrome is exploring different media to promote itself. While online advertising for web browsers was so long believed to be the most effective way of getting more people to install, simply because it makes more sense. But Google thinks otherwise. They are broadening the reach via print, television and outdoor advertising as well.

Driving to work on New Year’s Day, noticed a billboard or hoarding, as we call them in India, (on the Noida Link Road, near Mayur Vihar, Phase I, Delhi), advertising the web browser. Pulled up and took a quick shot with my mobile phone.

Wonder how much returns do such investments give?

If you were to type out the URL mentioned in the hoarding: www.google.co.in/Chrome, it would lead nowhere, i.e. returns a 404 error. This is because the URLs on Google are case sensitive (while the search queries are by default case insensitive) and on the hoarding the ‘C’ of Chrome is in caps. Things work fine when everything is in lowercase.

A tiny oversight, but one nevertheless given our expectations from a company such as Google. At least Google should ensure that people land up at the correct place, irrespective of the case they type in.

Yes, we know that Google (like so many of us) hates the overuse of ALL CAPS and therefore did away with the CAPS LOCK from the Google Chrome laptop keyboards. But at the same time so many of Google Chrome’s potential users (the kind that read hoardings and newspapers to decide their choice of web browser) are so hopelessly in love with the CAPS LOCK.

For me, Google Chrome is still my second most preferred browser, next to Mozilla Firefox.