ROME, ITALY: Google Inc will defend or even grow advertising market share as global spending shrinks in the downturn because its "efficient" model is suited to hard times, Chief Technology Advocate Michael T. Jones told Reuters.

Google is the world's dominant player in Internet search advertising, and financial analysts expect it to feel the pinch as slower consumer activity drags down paid clicks on search engines. But some analysts agree it may gain market share.

"When times are difficult, people are more efficient, more judicious, more careful in planning and choices when spending money," Jones said on Wednesday.

"The most effective advertising mechanism in the world seems to be the Google search, and I believe companies will do more of that, not less of that," Jones said in an interview in Rome.

"So what we expect is that whether total advertising may shrink or may not, the Google part should not. It may even grow," he said, comparing Google advertising to "having the most efficient car in a time of more expensive petrol prices".

Google pulled out of a search advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc last week due to U.S. regulatory objections.

The companies are respectively number one and two in the Internet search market, and advertisers opposed the deal, arguing that their market dominance could enable them to raise prices.

Part of the service

Jones, co-founder of Google Earth and Maps, the service that lets users move through three-dimensional satellite images of city streets, was in Rome to launch a new facility providing virtual visits to ancient Rome, circa 320 AD.

Based on virtual architecture of the ancient city created by U.S. and Italian academics, it now allows the 400 million people who visit Google Earth to enter the ancient Roman Forum "or go to the Circus Maximus and imagine you are Ben Hur", said Jones.

"It's an experience of a living, vibrant, imperial Rome. It's not archaeology. It's as though you lived in Rome," he told Reuters in the mayor's office, atop the ancient Capitoline Hill with sweeping views of the Forum, Colosseum and Palatine Hill.

Jones said it was the latest in a series of Google education applications that do not necessarily have a profit-making aim.

Google worked with the United Nations to make close-up views of refugee camps in Darfur to raise awareness of atrocities and provides a virtual visit to Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz to bring alive the horrors of the Holocaust.

"We don't aim to make money out of everything we do," said Jones, contrasting that outlook with airlines who "make money on the ticket, the drink, the cookies, but in more reasonable times made money on the ticket and everything else was part of the service".

"In our case we sell advertising in association with Google services, but everything else we do in large measure is for the benefit of mankind," he said.