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Regardless of the upsets (Jets win for the first time since before West Side Story?), who plays in this year’s Super Bowl is irrelevant for advertisers, even with a big market team like New York in the hunt. That’s because the cost to air a commercial this year decreased, not a healthy trend for any event, much less the pseudo holiday of the Super Bowl.

Pepsi, home to Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and countless other stars in the past is bailing on the entire event.  Instead, Twitter is all a titter about Pepsi Refresh, a grant program with a social media hooks.   Giving money to the community at large for various good works is certainly a longer lasting way to spend millions, but there is a message here for all businesses, large and small.

The biggest events — the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl, US presidential elections — still draw huge crowds and dominate the national news cycle for a long period, but at least one savvy marketing outfit in Pepsi has decided that an Internet spend tied to social media is a smarter bet.  They may not have the right answer.  They might not even have asked the right questions, and your business may be totally different, but after watching this Britney video from two games ago, decide whether the buzz Pepsi got from Ms. Spears is really bigger than what they’ll get throughout 2010.

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December’s search engine market share data is out from Hitwise.  Don’t bother with the link   The Fast Friday Fact is that Google’s share increased 1 point and the next 3 players (Yahoo, Microsoft’s Bing) all lost share.

Google now has 72.25% of U.S. search engine market share.   That’s why when people complain about the company or its policies, the battle is uphill. There is no real monopoly issue.  Google beat everyone at search fair and square, including its two closest competitors, both of whom had search engines and a big lead before Google launched.

Your Fast Friday Fact is that US Internet search is Google’s world.  You just get to use the site for free.

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By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the headlines that Google and as many as two dozen other technology companies came under attack by a coordinated hacking effort launched from China.  That’s interesting on many levels, not the least of which is that information technology and information — even about or maybe especially about individuals is an overripe ripe intelligence target.

Computer security is more critical than ever

Google may in fact take its ball and go home, packing it up in China if the company feels government restrictions there are onerous.  That’s interesting, and you probably should know about the issue which is why I included a link, but the big news is what the Chinese hack attack means for your Gmail account. Google has announced that the previously optional security setting that allowed users to use Gmail on unencrypted pages is no more.  The new default is encryption for Gmail, which means that users will soon be accessing an https: prefix.   This matters to you because it means your email from point A to point B just got much more secure, which is a good thing.   As the new article says, secure Gmail is rolling out in waves to the entire Gmail population, but I’ve already seen it on my main account. That doesn’t mean that Google itself doesn’t know exactly what you’re searching for and writing about.  Don’t ever believe that.   And don’t believe that your searching, browsing, writing and other activities are invisible.  Law enforcement and other entities can and do regularly subpoena this information from Google and every company I can think of dealing with data.    We even include a line in the terms of service for our e-commerce clients that gives the client the right to cooperate with law enforcement. Google published some good computer security guidelines along with the changes.    Take a look and make sure you’re protected.