360innovate are celebrating a mini victory today as we found out that we are allowed to keep our advertising billboards.

Let us start at the very beginning…

The bright sparks at 360innovate decided that their love and devotion to all things Google should be immortalized. So one bright morning, the 360innovate team created an advertisement proclaiming our love for the search engine.

The ‘Google is God’ roundabout advertisement was born.

After several month of fun and happiness, and on a gloomy morning not so long ago the 360innovate team was told of the horrible news that several complaints had been made about their lovely ‘Google is God’ advertisement to the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency).

Why? The reference to God was considered offensive. Surely not. Google is the worlds number 1 search engine, some would consider it the God of search engines and Google is God is a phrase thrown around all over the internet.

So off popped a nice email from 360innovate to the ASA explaining why we used the phrase ‘Google is God’ and that it was by no means meant to be offensive or blasphemous.

We waited on tender hooks for over a week, and finally found out today that ‘while distasteful to some, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence’ – we should think so too, it was only meant to be a bit of fun.

So in the end we are allowed to keep our ‘Google is God’ sign. Amen for that.

Fancy seeing it for yourself? Refer to the map below

View Larger Map

Some Google is God links:

The Church of Google

Is Google God by Thomas Friedman

Is Google God by Rebecca Myers

Google is not God

Is Google God of Googlism