For fans of Kevin Rudd, the end of Australia’s elections was anything but bitter.  But Google was nonetheless there, continuing the election coverage that it first announced in September.

Google’s 2007 Australian Federal Election site is still up; there’s no telling how long it’ll remain that way, so look now if you’re at all interested.  Among many other endeavors (“videos, gadgets, and more”) there’s a nice map showing color-coded election results.

Of course, that’s the sort of thing that regular news agencies have been creating for some time now, yet it was interesting to see Google get involved.  It was also interesting to see how the search giant was greeted; as noted by Frank Taylor, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation created its own graphics using Google Earth and Google Maps.

Want more “interesting” stuff?  The Australian elections coincided with the appointment of Karim Temsamani as General Manager for Google Australia and New Zealand.  (Actually, the General Manager announcement came about ten days earlier - however warmly we would greet Temsamani, Paul Rudd’s win is probably a little more important.)

We’ll now just wait and see what Google has in store for the upcoming U.S. elections.

Tags: Google, Australia, Elections