Lauren Indvik | Mashable
It’s only been six weeks since Marissa Mayer left Google for Yahoo, and already the company is violating some of the tenets she established there.
At least that’s how some are reacting to the animated banner ad Google put on its front page Tuesday. Mayer is credited with overseeing the layout of Google’s minimalistic, ad-free homepage.
The ad shows the top half of the tech giant’s Nexus 7 Android tablet beneath the text, “The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.” Click on the ad and you’re sent to Google’s Play store, where you can purchase the tablet.
Google has advertised on its front page before. The company put up an ad for its Nexus One smartphone in 2010, for instance. But that ad was much smaller, confined to a line of a text and an icon, and linked to an informational — not a product — page.
Google also put a text ad on its homepage to protest the passing of SOPA earlier this year — but again, there was no shopping cart attached.
