Google is again attempting to sell print ads through its incredibly successful online advertising Adwords system.

Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that Google ad revenues in the United Kingdom are already larger than the sales revenue of the British TV networks, the mammoth of mountain view is now trying to make customers of the hapless media barons who unwittingly funded the search engine’s expansion to some 9,400 employees.

Under the 3-month test 100 advertisers (reports Kevin Delany in November 6, Wall Street Journal) will be able to bid for space in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times and other top newspapers (its not like Google to start with anyone less than the best after all). Read more.

The offline advertising push comes as Google also ramps up attempts to broker TV and radio time.

Newspaper publishers can pick and choose which ads they want to run. Commenting on letting the online fox into the offline henhouse, a spokesman for Gannet Co. said "We need to figure out whether the uosides outweigh the downsides, and we won’t know until the test is done [Oh my freaking lordy, save us please]". Oh yes they did.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation, the body responsible for charting the preciptious fall in newspaper readership (and revenues), announced broad circulation losses at all the major newspapers last week.

Interestingly there was no word how print advertisers might track results from their web-print combo buy. Which is significant as one finds it hard to believe Adwords advertisers don’t alredy have the mechanism to place offline classifieds (and its not as if the publishers haven’t spent the last 5 years trying to find a way to shore up offline sales with their own web ad units).

Google also made a another move into the mobile market this week by offering a new version of Gmail. This only a few weeks after acquiring YouTube.com.

So pack yer bags, you’ll may be working for Mr Schmidt soon.