I was all ready to set up a blog post for tomorrow about the Super Bowl blipverts being placed by Miller Beer, but in the process of Googling to find this Consumerist article about it all, I saw that something is seriously amiss with Google.

Seems that for about a half-hour this morning, every Google result was tagged with a “this site may harm your computer” link that made getting to any site via Google a pain: clicking on the search results link would result in a warning page, so you had to cut and paste the URL you wanted from the warning page or the search result page into your browser.

Twitter’s going fairly nuts about it as I type this, and it’s going to be interesting to see what actually happened. Meanwhile, here’s a blog post from Coding Horror about Google’s malware protection, which went live in May 2007. Scroll down to see this morning’s comments from alarmed Google users.

Expect to hear a lot of discussion in the days to come about how to protect the Internet against potentially crippling malicious attacks.

UPDATE: Here’s a TechCrunch article about it. And an article from Ars Technica. And Mashable. Google’s blog post about it is over here.

“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”
—John Updike

That’s the interesting question that was asked by Jim Lodico in the Marketing & PR Innovators group over on LinkedIn.

It got me thinking, which got me responding, which gave me today’s post:

The rules of professionalism haven’t changed any more than the Golden Rule has changed … truth is timeless.

What has changed, though, is that the social media tools that facilitate communication have made it easier for crappy marketers and lowest-common-denominator ideas to dominate the conversation, which in turn makes it harder for quality talent and ethical ideas to get noticed.

Here’s an example:

LinkedIn has a reputation for being a business networking site. Indeed, groups like Marketing & PR Innovators attempt to serve as focal points around which professionals gather.

Someone with relatively little online marketing experience joins an online marketing group on LinkedIn looking for information and guidance. Let’s say they want information on email marketing. They post a question, or maybe read through the existing discussions (if they can find any amidst all the junky threads).

The prevailing view of the posts they see tells them: Buying third-party opt-in lists is the way to go! Spamming has a bad reputation; it’s really nothing more than advertising, the same as direct mail.

(By the way, this is pretty much the way it went on one recent LinkedIn thread I saw.)

Maybe there are one or two dissenting voices, but any relative subtleties of the issue — the legal definition of spam vs. the perception of spam on the part of the email recipient, for example, or the idea that attempting short-term gain can have long-term negative consequences — are lost in the din.

So the prevailing view is taken as industry expertise … and the industry descends another step toward the seventh circle of marketing Hell.

I think it’s a real problem.

Takeaway for marketers: Are your contributions to the conversation raising or lowering the bar?

Here comes MarketSplash from HP, via Logoworks.

VistaPrint‘s gotta be worried. Some of HP’s prices are significantly lower: 250 sheets of letterhead, for example, cost $52.99 versus $102.99 on VistaPrint. On the other hand, VistPrint is cheaper on envelopes by 10 bucks when you order 500.

HP’s design interface is snazzier, but their selection of out-of-the-box designs  is meager when compared with what VistaPrint offers. In some cases, though, you can pick up your HP order at your local Staples.

Like VistaPrint, MarketSplash lets you test-drive the service and get some business cards for free. Unlike VistaPrint, those free cards come with free shipping, too. Like VistaPrint, those freebees are MarketSplash-branded on the back. Still, if you’re a VistaPrint customer, odds are you’ll be interested in giving MarketSplash a whirl.

MarketSplash is going to be a player for a while: HP has a lot of ways to market the service, and the Staples connection is a good one.

Hmmmm … might a merger with HP be in VistaPrint’s future?

A coupla months ago, I blogged about the new Monty Python Channel on YouTube and noted that “the Pythons genuinely get it. (Media companies: Take note.)”

What does “get it” mean? It means that media companies and copyright holders and music companies and all the rest need to embrace the digital revolution, not fight it. Commerce will follow.

That’s a philosophy that causes many companies to scoff and cringe.

Now back to that Monty Python channel: Fast Company reports that all that free content resulted in a 23,000% increase in DVD sales.

Not 23% … not 230% … not 2,300% … 23,000%.

Media companies: Take note.

Takeaway for marketers: Take note, too.