Google does several things, well, make that a lot of things really well. There is no mistaking the fact that they are a very strong company and perhaps even too strong for many people. One thing they do really well is to get end users to do work for them. Here's where the asterisk in the title comes into play: *The headline says you can WORK for Google but it really is semantics since you actually DO work FOR Google and it's, of course, for free.

If you pay attention to how we categorize content here at Marketing Pilgrim you can get a good idea of where we feel a story fits in the Internet space. Most stories can be categorized in several different ways but there is usually one specific area that truly defines the story. In the case of the Louis CK experiment it's all about a pretty successful job of content marketing. For those of you who don't know who Louis CK is, he is a comedian. He is funny. Very funny.

Dear Google Places Team, Google Places has the potential to truly help businesses of all sizes since virtually every business be they large or small, has a place page for its location as well as its satellites. That's very cool. We as regular folks using the Internet like the potential.

I have decided that whenever a "report" comes from anywhere, even a "well-respected" source, that is not based in an actual announcement but is "rumored" to be in the works by "as early as" a certain date, that the title of the post will have a question mark? Why? Because it used to be that news was about something that has actually happened and is being reported on. Now the definition that works better,

The title pretty much says it all. Google has been giving free phone service )albeit a bit choppy at times but hey it's free!( for a while now. This generous offer was set to expire at the end of 2011 but apparently not enough folks are getting it quite yet so Google is now offering it through 2012. From the Gmail blog As the holiday season approaches, we're happy to announce that we've extended free domestic calls within the US and Canada for 2012.

Aol is at it again. It is busy reorganizing and re-inventing itself while the world sits on the sidelines wondering where the whole thing is going to land. At least the dial-up business is going to be tucked away into another area of the company so we don't have to watch that dry up and wither as well. According to Bloomberg AOL Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong plans to reorganize the company to combine its dial-up Internet access business with its Web services,

So much that happens in the online space is dependent upon measurement. The ability to measure results also greatly influences the ability to forecast, predict or prognosticate about where all of this is going. It sounds very clean cut and very exact doesn't it? Well, it's not and it is extremely important to understand that before you make any marketing decisions based on ANY data whatsoever.

As marketers we often have to pay attention to areas of life that we ourselves have no interest in. Many people get turned off when we talk about sports but guess what? Whether you, as a marketer, watch or not is COMPLETELY irrelevant. If your market is there you better be there as well no matter what your personal peccadilloes. Why am I bringing this up? Well,

We still have around 10 days left in the online holiday shopping season )that's leaving a few days for shipping by Christmas( and the news thus far to the activity is good despite the worldwide jitters about economic factors. The chart below from comScore tells a story of holiday online sales cheer with nothing but positive numbers. How much of your shopping this year has been online? More? Less? Do you still get out and press the flesh with those offliners?

Google has entered the competition for content packaging in the mobile space with its Google Current offering. From the Google Mobile blog We strive to give you beautiful and simple ways to experience all the content the web has to offer, such as sharing photos on Google+, watching YouTube videos and discovering books, movies and music from Android Market. Today we're expanding our content offering with the introduction of Google Currents,

The Facebook subscribe button is now going to be appearing alongside many folks name online and it gives all of us an opportunity to have another look at these folks through their Facebook updates. I get the general idea but my experience thus far with subscribing to people I am not friends with on Facebook has been spotty at best with most experiences being, quite frankly, VERY disappointing.

Twitter is trying to finish off 2011 with a bang. The service has been a little quiet on the news front as of late and today we have learned why as they have introduced not only a new look but their own version of brand pages. Fearing they would be outdone by the likes of Google+, Facebook and just about anyone else, the microblogging service )does anyone actually use that term anymore other than the way I just did?

As we always like to do here at MP we will let you absorb the new Twitter using their video. We do this instead of trying to tell you how to best use the new design without having a real chance to run with it ourselves. Oh, we also do that because we know you can think for yourselves. Visit the Twitter blog for some more info or here for even more. We'll be checking in with our thoughts once we have them.

Search sure has come a long way from its blue text link beginnings. While the desktop and mobile versions of Google still offer some of those options there are so many different ways to search now it's hard for marketers to get their arms around optimizing it all. Voice search adds a whole new dimension to the discipline and Siri has upped the ante )at least initially as it seems that its Beta tag is proving it should be just that, in beta(.

Still having trouble getting the powers that be to give you more funds for your Internet marketing efforts? Still trying to convince some people on your team of the value of the Internet to future of the business? Well, a quarterly report produced by ZenithOptimedia which claims to be one of the largest media services firms in the world )don't they all?

There is some buzz happening around the rollout of Facebook's much bally-hooed Timeline feature. Of course, in fine Internet industry fashion it is being trumpeted in front of the whole world but is currently only available in the high population center of New Zealand. Mashable's editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff has graced us with his take on the service that has been "leaked" ahead of this move: Mashable showed us all how to build our Timelines early,

As I was doing my daily early morning scan of way too much information for anyone to actually ingest, I came across a study that was done by IDG and looked at by the Center for Media Research . The study looked at technology marketers, the classic B2B marketers who are trying to sell their wares to other businesses in most cases.

A new study by Forrester points out some very interesting things about the whole location based or geosocial marketing opportunity that exists today. While it may seem cool the fact is that most people are not even using them and haven't even heard of them yet! Maybe this one of the reasons that Gowalla's founders took the money and ran ! Ok everyone just relax.

Sure HubSpot is the sponsor of our Inbound Marketing channel but this would have been news anyway. The Cambridge, MA company that now has over 5,000 businesses using their SaaS )software as a service( inbound marketing software system has developed and introduced a new free tool called Marketing Grader to do more than just analyze your website's performance.

From the "We'll take it any way we can get it" category comes this application of the Bing search functionality in a place where is totally rules over Google. Yeah right, it's from the new search function on the Xbox 360 but it is about voice search so it's almost as cool as Apple's Siri as well, right? Anyway, take a look if you would like or get Microsoft's view from their blog go here .