Art, brands, and iGoogle

A kind reader has brought to my attention the “themes” that you can acquire to pimp out, or whatever, your iGoogle home page. I’m not an iGoogle person myself, so I don’t know how new this is, but I was interested to see the sort of pitch to the potential page-pimper as “What happens when great art mixes with the Google homepage?”

I’m going to guess that one thing that happens is that Google gets paid. Because I see that much of the “great art” is by brands, such as Dolce & Gabbana, Ecko, and Bathing Ape. And even most of the artist art is from sort of brand-type artists, such as Jeff Koons. Also Michael Graves is in there, I’m not sure how to count him. And Coldplay, oddly enough.

The other possibility is that these “artists” get paid, or have been paid, by Google. My assumption is that these art pieces are more than anything else analogous to ads for the various entities represented, so the money would flow from them to Google. But maybe I’m wrong. One of the curious things about the cross-branded murketing world, especially online, is sometimes it’s hard to tell who pays whom, and under what theory.

Anyway, if you’re an iGoogler, please enjoy, uh, “personalizing” your experience.

[Thanks Rebecca!]

UPDATE 5/2: For another point of view on all of this, from representative of the super-savvy youth culture Joshspear.com: It’s a “a rad new customizing feature” that lets you “personalize your search toolbar”! What’s the point in making fun of this stuff if the coolhunters come LATER and STILL spout the SAME OLD CLICHES? Here’s something you might consider “personalizing”: your thoughts.