Google has always been weak at marketing, hobbled by a cultishly engineering-centric culture that believes products should promote themselves. It worked for search, but little else. The official list of Google-branded Web services is dizzying in its me-too obscurity. Chipper house-ad videos posted on YouTube have done nothing to change this. Perhaps Google should hire The Vacationeers, makers of "The Googling"?

The archly dystopian series of Web videos feature 20somethings in L.A. using a wide range of Google's Web products. Google via text message? Customized maps? I bet most of the series' viewers had no idea Google even offered such services. Sure, the horror-film-lite endings won't play well in Larry and Sergey's candy-colored, hyperliteralist utopia. But it's high time Google starts figuring out some way to market itself besides pointing to the exercise balls and free food.