Google goes into competition with Santa!

If you have young children in your family, there is no doubt you will have heard of the popular Christmas site – NORAD Tracks Santa. The site is loved all over the world as THE best way to follow Santa’s progress around the globe as he delivers gifts to billions of children at lightning speed.

The site tracks each global time zone as the clock strikes midnight and announces when Santa has paid his ‘magical’ visit. If you have got young kids, you will also know how hard it is to get them to stop tracking Santa and go to bed!

You might be wondering why we mention this. Well, in addition to the appropriate festive flavour of the topic, we’ve just heard that yet again, for the 2nd year running, Google is going into competition with NORAD by releasing its own Santa tracker. It seems that what started out as a wonderful virtual extension of the magic of Christmas has now turned into another internet ratings war. This is one battle we are not sure Google will win however.

If you go to Google, and type in, ‘track Santa’ right now, you’ll see that the NORAD site comes out on top. The Google Santa tracking site comes in at 2nd place. In the grand scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter which site families use, but we thought this was an excellent illustration of brand loyalty, and of Google dominance

Tumblr, Facebook and other social media sites are already speaking up in favour of NORAD. There have even been statements from Google, and from Bing, who partner with NORAD Tracks Santa.

Google announced that their tracker will include games and holiday themed scenes, very similar to NORAD. Google has also made their tracker available on app, as have NORAD. But here’s the big news – Google have a hotline to Communication Services at the North Pole, so they can help their visitors send messages to directly to Santa, and to their friends! It seems there is nowhere online that Google will not try to have an influence. Let’s see if their Santa tracking site gets to the top before Christmas, or whether customer loyalty will keep NORAD at the top.

At least both sites have acknowledged their great responsibility in tracking Santa, and they have both acknowledged that they are indeed tracking the same man in a red suit, has he flies around the world in his sleigh pulled by reindeer!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year!

From all the team here at Indazo