Google is Crucial Constituency in '08 Race

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "It's easy to forget that this is the first presidential campaign in which an appearance at Google's candidate forum has become an important part of many candidates' strategies but when Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked Barak Obama "How do you determine good ways of sorting one million 32-bit integers in two megabytes of RAM?" at a recent forum at Google Headquarters and Obama surprised everyone by answering "A bubble sort is the wrong way to go," it showed just how important a pilgrimage to Google has become in this election cycle. Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Barak Obama have already gone to Google to sit exposed on the stage, without the protective lectern provided in a debate, answering questions for 45 to 60 minutes without the escape hatch of a timekeeper's buzzer. Though all of the candidate sessions at Google are available on YouTube, they are not YouTube-like: they require an investment of time that, by YouTube viewer standards, is inconceivable. And not all candidates have the same draw with YouTube's audience. As of December 5 Ron Paul's 65 minute appearance is leading all other candidates with 374,263 views."