Agreed, this doesn't surprise me at all these days. Even my dad has Google Alerts set up for his name, so I'd expect it to be pretty much a guaranteed given that most companies would have it set up for their trademarks.
Odd - Google alerts have always taken the better part of a day in my experience. I must be using the slow option. ;)
You can select the frequency with which you receive alerts. I have mine set up to send them as soon as they happen, and the turnaround is almost always less than an hour.