A9.com On The O.C.
A9.com had a bit of strange product placement on last night’s episode of The O.C.. As Beta News reports, last night on the show, someone said “I A9.com’d him”, as opposed to, say, “I Google’d him”. Not sure when this happened, since I couldn’t pay complete attention to the show while I had to watch the Apprentice for my recap. The article says:
It’s not clear whether Amazon paid for the television placement or writers of the “The O.C.” were simply tired of Google taking all the credit. Amazon has been struggling to push its fledgling A9.com brand, which ranks 30th among search engines.
Incidentally, while A9 was given a (presumably) free plug on Fox, Yahoo Local was plugged on The Apprentice, where guests at the contestants motels used it to leave reviews, which you can read here. I’m not sure that the motel owners would want to remind people of the episode, since the rooms got terrible reviews, and the only good things anyone had to say were about the staff (the contestants). One reviewer even said “the Yahoo people” were especially friendly.
UPDATE: C|Net has this:
“We didn’t even know it was going to air,” A9 Chief Udi Manber said. But “it shows people like…A9…and that they are telling their friends and family.”
I have a theory. Since fox did the same thing with Arrested Development recently (see the comments), and Fox has been known to drop the phrase “I Google’d” into its shows, and we know that Google has been trying to stop people from using that phrase (to avoid becoming another Xerox), maybe Google contacted Fox and asked them to stop saying “Google’d”? Fox, in turn, is trying out every other random search engine, just so it doesn’t have to rewrite its scripts, or alternatively, out of spite. Thought?
From Google Video Search:
“Why, why happened? Did he call you? No, but I a9.Com’d him last night, and according to the O.C. Weekly, he’s pretty much everything that’s…”
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Comment by Jesse Perry | January 28, 2005
Oh my god! Jesse found a good use for Google (TV) Video Search. Nice one.
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Oh, and I could totally see her using A9, but never using it in a sentence…
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | January 28, 2005
I know. Poor thing for Amazon - it’s not easily turned into a verb. I personally like the fluid A9.com interface.
Comment by Jesse Perry | January 28, 2005
Damn. lol. I watched that entire show, and I had no idea that she said “A9.com’d” when she said she had found out her biological father is evil. Why couldn’t they just go with Googled? And why are there such hot girls on that show? Not that I’m complaining. lol.
Comment by Jason | January 28, 2005
And unlike Nathan, I can’t see her using A9. She seems like the type to look at micro-film in the library, or she would have before she met Ryan.
Comment by Jason | January 28, 2005
true that ‘I a9.com’d it’ isnt quite roll off the tought material, but in the business world, a plug is a plug…and yes the girls are hott..its tv!!
Comment by Steve | January 28, 2005
I noticed this phenomenon on another Fox show last week: naming “Ask Jeeves” on “Arrested Development”.
http://video.google.com/videopreview?q=%22ask+jeeves%22&docid=-678069144970209020
Comment by Emma | January 28, 2005