Yesterday, Google announced that it will be sending professional photographers to business in an effort to beef up the quality and quantity of content in listings on Google Places. Apparently, the company isn’t satisfied with satellite photos, street views, a camera-equipped bicycle, and even a snowmobile for helping people find things in the real world. They are now interesting in actually going inside the businesses they list.

To feed this insatiable lust for information, Google has hired professional photographers in select cities in the United States, Australia and Japan. Businesses can apply for a photo shoot at the Google Business Photos site. Apparently, the shoots will take about an hour, and will be minimally disruptive for pretty much all types of businesses. And best of all, like most things Google, the photo shoots have the competitive price of $0.00 (which, regardless of the exchange rate, is also ¥0 in Tokyo and Kyoto).

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A few weeks ago, DTC was selected as a “Favorite Place” on Google. Based on information gathered from user behavior and local listings, this means that we have been selected among the Top 10% of businesses, calculated by the popularity of our local business listing.

Google informed us of our status with the following letter:

Dear Business Owner,

Congratulations! You’re a favorite Place on Google. Between July 1 and September 30. Google users found your Digital Third Coast Internet Marketing business listing xxxx times, and requested driving directions or other information about your business xxxx times. Read More

My fellow rich and famous, the wait is over! For years Google has kept us all down by only allowing public transportation options in Google Maps. Take a bus? You’ve got to be kidding me! Subway? Isn’t that a restaurant? What about the dozens of us hard working Americans that have access to a private helicopter? Aren’t we people, too?

In between sips of champagne from this diamond encrusted glass, Read More