Was Googlegate Blog Just a Cheap PR Stunt? Looks Like It Was

So now we have Googlegate: Inside Google blog speculates that the brou ha ha over Mark Jen's 99zeros blog might have been a cheap publicity stunt by Google. Jen is a former Microsoft employee now working and blogging for Google.

It all smells like a three day old rotting fish to me.

Inside Google says:
"Either Google has Jen blogging to make them look better, and the events this week were a way of publicizing the "little worker fighting the good fight and forcing Google to be nicer", or, seeing the positive reaction to Mark's blog, Google has decided to push him, because he makes them look good....Google needs their Scoble, and maybe they figured that since so many people have noticed Mark, and many are willing to listen since he's willing to diss his bosses, Mark is the perfect person to blog about Google."

Inside Google points to a post showing that someone has bought ads on Google that direct readers to Jen's blog.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch says that it's quite possible that Jens took a Google ad out for his own blog in an effort to draw attention to it.

If it's a PR stunt, it pretty clever, because it certainly got a lot of media exposure both when Google supposedly took down the blog and when it went back up. But so far, Jen is no Scoble.

Meanwhile, an anonymous poster comments on Jen's blog: "I'm starting a pool. How long do you think it will take until they fire this guy's ass? Obviously, he's not actually WORKING, he's bored and surfing the web all day at [sic]googol."