Google sends Cr-48 to "Will it Blend?"

[bdb]

This is particularly awesome because my Cr-48 came with a piece of paper that said something like:

"Do not crush, incinerate, blend (guess we'll never find out if it'll blend...), ...(several other things)..."

[cypherpunks01]

The full first paragraph of the Safety Notice:

This product contains sensitive components. Do not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, bake, deform, puncture, blend (guess we'll never know if it'll bend), shred, incinerate, paint, bring to the moon, or insert foreign objects into the device. Do not spill liquids, rocks of any size, or food on the device. Do not expose the device to water, moisture or rap music.

It keeps going... :)

[guiseppecalzone]

Google did another advertisement where they destroy at least 5 laptops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature

I used to think that "Will it blend" was funny. Maybe the novelty of it has warn off. Instead of laughing, watching this video made me wince.

[riobard]

I had the same weird feeling watching that video. There is something fundamentally wrong there. I'm especially worried about the last part when the little girl destroying the last CR-48: she was so calm to do that without a blink. I was shocked. This is not the way we teach our children.

[edit]: there's a tagline said by the demo guy in the video: “good thing I get a new one every time”. This kinda thinking bothers me.

[code_duck]

I completely agree. This video is not amusing: it is offensive and I see that man as a complete idiot. I have no idea what this smug destruction is intended to signify.

[kurtsiegfried]

I find it somewhat ironic that this video will not play on my CR-48.

[sliverstorm]

I wouldn't say that's irony- sounds to me like your CR-48 just doesn't want to watch the execution of it's brother.

[antimatter15]

It's meant to be played from http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ which is in flash and should (from what I've read) be excruciatingly slow anyway.

[sshconnection]

I just watched it on mine. You need to go to settings and enable the media player. It pops up a little player like the download and im windows.

[mivok]

Go to about:flags and enable media player, then it will play pretty well (although it's a little laggy when played full screen)

[quux]

Now blend the cloud!!!!

[simonsarris]

Wouldn't that just be blending things from a datacenter?

Lest we let it slip our mind, the cloud is a still a group of real places, its just data/processing not near your location.

[moondowner]

"I wonder where the cloud is?" When he finds the servers he'll blend them too :)

[metatronscube]

What a waste! especially since I have little to no chance of getting picked to try one out :( Oh well.

[gvsyn]

Only question with the blending, have they ever tried blending another blender (same model etc)?

[retroafroman]

http://www.virtualshackles.com/102

[riledhel]

OOOhhh blender recursion!!

[guyzero]

Does this video series actually sell any blenders?

[natrius]

No one would've ever heard of Blendtec without them. I'm sure they've sold more than enough to recover the couple thousand dollars they've spent on the videos.

[ugh]

I’m pretty certain that this marketing campaign stars prominently in the wet dreams of many marketing guys and girls.

The iPhone and the iPad “Will It Blend?” video have ten million views each on YouTube, other videos usually clock in at between a few hundred thousand and a few million views. The videos themselves have shoddy production values, I would be surprised if producing one costs more than a few thousand dollars. All this makes for a ridiculously low CPM. Oh, and those ten million views are high quality contacts, they all actually wanted to watch the video, unlike, say, a pre-roll ad on YouTube that’s forced on them.

A pre-roll ad on YouTube has a CPM between $10 and $15. Blendtec could have spent $100,000 on the production of their iPhone video (I doubt they spent even a tenth of that) and still pay less than a company which tries to get an ad on YouTube the normal way. (Those companies pay for the production of the spot, just like Blendtec, but they also pay Google for running the spot.)

[Griever]

With that question in mind, BlendTec is the only blender company that I know of. Granted, I don't exactly pay much attention to the blender market, but I think that's the point.

[bpd1069]

Its all about mindshare, I am sure this series places BlendTec in your top 10 list of blenders. If you have never seen the series, it would never get on your top 100 (if there are that many).

[sanswork]

The guy in the videos(the company founder) has said its had a noticeable effect on sales.

[unsignedint]

I've spotted few of those blenders at Starbucks. Not sure if these videos are ones convinced vendor relations people though...

[albemuth]

I couldn't apply for one of these (though I really wanted one) because I'm not on the US, good to see them put to good use.

[icco]

I'm still waiting for the iFixit teardown. Maybe Google will send them one?

[wildmXranat]

Do NOT breathe that in.

[Apocryphon]

That's no Chromebook! That's a black MacBook running Chrome!

[code_duck]

Well, that was a stupid waste. At least I can take solace in the knowledge that this man is inhaling a significant quantity of toxins.

[phlux]

While funny etc. We have so much waste in the world as it is - the last thing we need is the toxic waste of a perfectly good machine being blended and thrown out.

I have never had respect for the 'will it blend' concept, regardless of how funny one may find it. It is simply wasteful.

[huntero]

It's advertising. Admittedly, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I would imagine that the economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended.

[DavidSJ]

By what criteria do you distinguish wasteful environmental impact from justified environmental impact?

[axod]

The average mail shot wastes more in envelopes stamps, CO2 from delivery van etc etc.

Chill out.

[robryan]

While we sit here thinking about this though much worse waste is going on it the world unseen. My uni gets big dumpsters and throws out 100's of computers each year. Granted they are usually getting old though.

[benatkin]

The environmental cost per viewer is infinitesimally small, so I don't buy that argument. An argument about it leading viewers to carelessness would be a sad statement about humor.

[bigwally]

a youtube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM

[jrockway]

I actually wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, but I didn't get one.

Oh well. I keep forgetting that it's Microsoft that says "developers, developers, developers, developers".

[apetresc]

You're joking, right? The fact that you weren't one of the thousands to receive a free laptop makes Google developer-unfriendly?

[cypherpunks01]

Uh, well I wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, and they did send me one...

Microsoft has never given me anything except excruciating IE 6/7/8/9 bugs.

[signal]

What was that Google mantra again?

Evil has many shades of grey but wasting a computer that could literally educate an entire schoolhouse in Africa and keeping this old, stupid joke going must be somewhere south of good.

[sliverstorm]

Who's to say this old, stupid joke of a publicity stunt won't sell them enough cr-48's to give TWO cr-48's to schoolhouses in Africa instead of the one they started with? That's what business is, the classic best answer to "you have one egg. How do you make two?"