I attended the press thingamebob for Google South Africa earlier, along with fellow bloggers Paul, Scott, Alastair, Mathew, Mike, and his Mum.

The event, about Google’s local plans was presented by two very talented speakers, Douglas Merril, Google CTO, and Stafford “air-bracket” Masie – so all the right ingredients were there.

Alas, it was a load of wank.

Douglas flew half way around the world to eloquently deliver what was essentially The Google Story executive summary. And Stafford other than wobbling his fingers a lot and telling us that his goal was to “light up Africa” with search, didn’t have much to say of substance at all.

What irritated me the most though was what they did say. In a nutshell, they do not see any difference in rolling out Google’s search in a market like South Africa than they do elsewhere in the world. This is madness. They just have to look at their own Zeitgeist for proof.

While the world is searching for Britney’s tits, South Africans are searching for “Absa” and “Standard Bank” (sadly, I had to refer to old data, as contrary to what was said today, Google don’t consider us important enough to list on their international zeitgeist anymore).

What this means is that we are not a search driven market, but a delivery driven one, people want to be taken places they know, they don’t necessarily want to find things they don’t. Regardless, we’re a fundamentally different market to the States and other first world countries, and it is only arrogance that would lead someone to think otherwise.

That, and the fact that for the first time ever I realised that Google was actually just another big corporate – it was like the day I found out there was no Santa. Sad indeed.

I guess in this case “No news” is bad news. ..!