This goes on everywhere. Go to a golf tournament and AIG will have a huge tent for business executives, think they have never heard of AIG? Do you think that the people who walk by the FedEx tent outside the Orange Bowl don't know about Fed Ex?

Bloggers will mention their location in their posts, meaning they will mention Google, that's one of the points, advertising, and no, you can never get too much of it.

The other is to help the "blogosphere" as much as possible. The easier it is for Bloggers at the conventions to blog the more posts they make. The more posts they make the more traffic they get, the more traffic they get the more ads their readers see. I wonder who it is who sells all those internet ads?

Oh yeah.

People will associate the name Google with the political process. You're doing some of the heavy lifting for them - I had no idea they were doing this until you told me. If it leads to 1% more people doing political searches on Google, they make a ton of money. Just as importantly, MSN and Yahoo! aren't doing it so they won't be associated with the conventions at all.

What Google wants more than anything is to be pervasive. They are going to insinuate themselves into any high profile event they can. Not a coincidence they bought a big share of Baidu a few years back, but unloaded it when they saw it wouldn't help them much in August 2008.

Most people in the political blogosphere are concerned about privacy rights. Google is trying to encourage everyone to move applications and documents onto their servers instead of yours. Gee, being nice to bloggers might be a good way to blunt criticism - "Those people at Google are good guys, we can trust them."

I gotta say, Cyrus, you have, so far done the best job in covering The Machinist blog. Political, yes. Limited scope in technology, yes. Limited scope because of your political views on technology? No.

Thanks for not giving the immediate impression that you toss off a particular brand or product.

Because of their dealings in China.