Then along came Google which invented its own box (the Google Search Appliance) for businesses to use in their buildings, to search their intranets, internal company documents, that sort of thing.

Google couldn’t make their box a different shape, because it had to fit in racks with all the other boxes. So it made it bright yellow. And whacked a massive logo on the side.

Then it ran a competition to see how “findable” the box is in the server room. That helped to promote the concept, because the box is there to help businesses find things more easily.

I know Google has a million clever people working for it, but that’s really smart.

It’s worked fine for three years but this morning is down. Argh! Have we done something wrong?

No. It’s not us, it’s Gmail. And it’s down across the world.

What’s interesting is how we found out. 20 minutes before there was anything in Google News, it was all over the micro blogging service Twitter. At one point 100 people a second were tweeting that their Gmail was down.

You can follow it with a simple Twitter search, or using a clever application like Twitterfall.

An important part of PR is connecting to your audience in the way they want to be communicated with. Right now, Twitter is a hot way of talking to people.

Our friends at Bytestart have a very useful guide to using Twitter in your business.

UPDATE: Our email is back! And apparently, Google’s London PR team couldn’t send out a statement… because their email was down!

A consulting firm has ripped apart Google’s business model and put together a report for anyone to see.

Probably a good week’s work, but a smart way to demonstrate their analytical skills.

Pity for us UK folk then that the English version of the company’s website is still written in French…

When it launched Gmail, you could only get it if invited by someone who already had it. And users only had 100 invites each.

Restricting the availability of Gmail in this way made it a “must-have” product with some people clamouring to get it. It also made those who already had it proud to be part of the club.

Two days ago Google “accidentally” launched the marketing early for its new browser Chrome, which it hopes people will move to from Internet Explorer and FireFox.

Ignoring the technical improvements Chrome has, they’ve done a pretty smart thing. There are thousands of people across the world waiting to see what Google will do next, and by supposedly letting the cat out of the bag early, they may have succeeded in generating more publicity than with a ‘normal’ product launch.

A smart way to generate word of mouth publicity.

BRILLIANT!

This is going to get so much word of mouth publicity for Gmail. It’s so simple, I love it.

Haven’t had chance to read yesterday’s paper yet, but I can virtually guarantee each of them will have a good one, especially since the Sundays only get an April 1st every few years.

I’ve said before, it’s worth every business doing an April Fool’s joke on their customers. It helps them feel part of your family. Jamie Harrop emailed me to reveal a website he helps moderate called WebHosting Talk, was planning to make the users think some technical errors had been made. They would be able to see a “private” staff chat area, with posts including a free trip to Las Vegas for the volunteers that moderate, and a clever discussion thread that would look like the usrname of the person viewing the thread was about to be banned.

Clever stuff – and Jamie emailed an update: ” I just wanted to let you know that the April Fools joke at WebHostingTalk went down a treat. Many are saying it was the best April Fools joke they have ever seen, and certainly the best WebHostingTalk has done.”

See one of the threads discussing the stunt here. Think how powerful it would be to get your customers talking about your business in that way.

It’s so simple to use that you can see why it’s huge – anyone can upload video clips of any length about virtually anything (clean, anyway). Think how powerful that could be, particularly if you do publicity stunts, or unusual marketing activity.

What if you filmed yourselves building a giant pyramid of your product? Testing the durability of it by chucking it off a building, or running it over? Your team miming to a chart song (wearing the company T-shirt). Simple easy ideas work well.

The beauty of all this is it should only take you a few minutes to video it (and you don’t need any special kit, a cheap video or modern mobile would do). If your video clip is good enough, people who find it will email it to others. Have a browse through the site to see what kind of things are most viewed.

It’s almost scary how much content there is on the internet without you realising it. You need to keep track what’s being said about your business, both in the mass media and new media. My suggestion round this is to set up a Google email alert for your business. Let Google’s computers do the hard work trawling the web for anything written about your business. Make sure you select news and web – oh, and go for one email a day, or you could be swamped. I’ll stick Google email alerts on the links page.