I know it's off-topic, but I'm impressed with the idea that a public corporation can spend 8 figures on something that has essentially $0 ROI and multiple people here can find bad things about it.
I'm shocked someone didn't say "but that's only 0.0000$WHATEVER percent of their profit!".
Google does many things which can be argued as evil, or not, but I would say this is very much not one of them.
Indeed !! BTW, my reference to "Evil" was a sarcasm in relation to those who constantly need to label a company like Google as such, I don't even find Microsoft to be "Evil". Well they have been trying that for many years :-) ... Also for clarification, I didn't find that piece of information from Google on their home page or any reference from a visible site, I don't believe they are doing it just to generate some noise or PR. I just received a message from them for being their user saying: "Hello, As we near the end of the year, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for the time, energy, commitment, and trust you've shared with us in 2009. With sharing in mind, this year we've decided to do something a little different. We hope you'll find it fits the spirit of the holiday season. We're looking forward to working with you to build lasting success in 2010. Happy Holidays, Your Google Team" The link to that page was embedded in the "something a little different" text. To be frank, for all the years I've been suffering with MS-DOS, and the many versions of Windoze, I never/ever received a message from Microsoft thanking me for being their user/customer ... Cheers Jorge