Google (sorta) gets it

On Sept. 8 I noticed Google had a link to support Katrina relief on its start page. (By the way, who invented the dingy gray "Katrina awareness ribbon?") I clicked it and was brought to Amazon's Red Cross donation page. So I wrote to Google and said,

Dear Google,
Don't you think it would make sense to instead link to a page of your own keyword advertisers who are charities raising money for hurricane relief? I mean, the Red Cross doesn't need ALL the money!!! And you don't have to chase people away from your site to give. Thanks.

A week later I got an auto-reply (can you call it an auto-reply when it takes a week?) that said,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. We just wanted to let you know that we've passed your comments along to the appropriate team, and that your feedback is extremely valuable to us.

Yeah, Right, I thought.

Then, last night, I saw a more substantial "Hurricane Katrina Resources" link on their home page. I clicked it, and -- Wow -- a real collection of links to aid agencies and resources.

I still don't understand why they don't just run the "Hurricane Katrina" Google keyword ads. Is that too hard for them to do?

Rick...