Google has done something I didn’t anticipate … at least, I didn’t anticipate it happening so soon.  But with Google trying to push YouTube into profitability and Android phones coming on the market as early as this winter, I guess the timing makes sense.

Google has gone from zero to $179 billion in ten years, and in that time, they’ve been great at aggregating content, organising content, even partnering with media outlets to distribute content.  But one thing they’ve never done is produce content — until now.  As reported by Ars (sometimes I think I should just redirect my page to Ars … ), Google is teaming up with Seth MacFarlane to produce a series of original animated shorts.

Google says they’re going to distribute the spots via Adsense, but with a runtime of 2 minutes max, it might be perfectly suited to viewing on a mobile browser (read: an Android handset).  MacFarlane draws a pretty specific demographic (caucasian man-children between the ages of 5 and 35) — a demographic that Google no doubt wants to lure away from Apple.

The question, of course, is whether this is more like Celine Dion singing for Sony Music, or whether it’s more like Celine Dion singing for Air Canada.  That is — is it a stunt, just some high-profile advertising with help from a very special friend?  Or does it signal a change in the way Google looks at content — something they can take an active role in producing, instead of perfunctorily racking it up and spreading it around?  If it’s the latter, it would be a big move for Google.

It would be a big move for anyone, actually — as Ars points out, major producers have tried (hesitantly) to produce original web content in the past, with pretty disastrous results.  What works on TV does not necessarily work on the Internet, and while there have certainly been plenty of breakaway hits on the Internet, virtually all of them come from different sources than the stuff on TV (Lazy Sunday notwithstanding (I would link to the actual video, but since I’m writing from outside the US, I’m in the part of the world that is irrelevant to NBC)).

If this turns out to be a PR-driven partnership, then who cares?  But if it turns out that Google is going to become a content provider, moving alongside the NBCs and CBSs of the world — and especially considering Google’s approach to making anything and everything available — then it could be a very big deal indeed.