Ever since the infamous “1984” Apple Superbowl commercial, the creation of a quality tech ad to be aired on Super Bowl Sunday has simultaneously been known as a marketing minefield, and as a potential holy grail.

On one hand, you could hold a captive audience of billions and stand out among an unending barrage of seemingly indistinguishable beer and car ads. On the other hand, you could waste millions of dollars on an overly erudite and confusing message that makes more people say “huh?” than “hmmm.” Every year, many try (though still never enough to outnumber beer and car ads) and only a few succeed. 2010 was no different. To keep from falling into the classic pitfalls, a Super Bowl tech ad has to accomplish three things. First it must not alienate the traditional Super Bowl audience of beer swilling football fans, who love gadgets. Second, it must not alienate the less populous, but more tech-savvy, gadget mongering pop-culture fans, who watch for the ads and water-cooler conversation. Third (this is a big one), it has to tell people what the product actually is and does. Finally, it must actually entertain the audience in some way. Some of the ads on the Super Bowl are interesting enough to draw viewers who don't even like footballs; there's steep competition.

To demonstrate, the infamous Apple 1984 failure can be compared to the 2010 Google Paris Love Add. Both were relatively appealing to the pop-culture crowd, but the 1987 ad left the traditional Super Bowl audience un-hooked. Any "modern man" can relate to having girl questions and trying to Google the answer; or at the very least not having been able to Google the answer due to it not existing yet. In addition, Apple said absolutely nothing about what they even sold. It was simply an ambiguous message of defiance of authority, while “Paris Love” demonstrates exactly what Google is and does, in real time (for the three people watching who didn't already know). What's more, the “Paris Love” add was able to craft the plot to a complete love story in under a minute, while 1984 left us with just enough questions to not care about answers. Winner: Google. Just watch