cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/22055566
Google ad on a magazine from 1999
If only they had stuck with that
this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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But then, how would they make all the money?
They could still track your searches, and still use that data to put targeted ads on other people’s sites.
Which they still do, but it wasn't enough money to satiate the greed.
Ahh yes the "Do no evil" era.
Notice that era was before they went public. Then it predictably became the "how do we make a profit this quarter?" era.
That's not a Google issue. That's literally each and every public traded corporation. They need to maximize shareholders profits by definition.
Could we stop stock markets and that? I'd love it.
I don't believe anyone decided to step in deeper shit one step at a time, they listed, and from there onwards it's the only possible path. Death by a thousand greedy strokes.
It's a Google issue because the executives... specifically chose to chase higher profits on the stock exchange. There's plenty of private companies that make money, yet retain their soul and aren't at the quarterly whim of outside investors...
I would like to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when they decided "OK now we're evil, right?"
are we the baddies?
How the mighty have fallen
yea, its funny to see xkcd.com/792 from 2010, back when google wasn't evil
As it turns out, making boatloads of money despite already doing that was the plan.
As someone said, the goal of capitalism isn't to have a lot of money, it is to have all of the money.
All these companies start off with altruistic intentions and then become evil. Money and power is helluva drug.
Google set out specifically to not be evil. They even set their company motto as "don't be evil". But then racist fucking psychopath Sundar Pichai was hired as CEO and the motto was scraped for "do the right thing", with the "right thing" always being evil. The new motto is only half spoken. The full motto is truly "do the right thing to obtain money and power at all costs".
I wonder if this is the actual philosophy Google had at the time or if they always planned to be what they are now.
There will always be a difference between the two-things-in-a-basement mentality and the oh-god-won't-somebody-think-of-the-shareholders mentality.
Don't be evil, you know.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of Steve Wozniak / Steve Jobs split personality thing going on. Maybe one or the other person involved were serious about the "don't be evil" thing. But the others were not.
yeah sorta funny how google took over partly because yahoo was so fully of ads and crap.
What magazine?
Playboy?
I'm gonna believe it was Hustler, Larry Flynt was a big supporter of internet freedom.
If they had ads for themselves, I assume they had income. But they say that their platform doesn't have ads. Where did they get the money to pay their own ads?
Every source on the history of Google seems to ~~implicate~~ imply that their growth and development went:
Using their university resources -> surviving off of investor money -> starting monetization with targeted ads and raking in money
So it seems they had a phase of cornering their market with both public resources and off risky investments, then capitalised on having that exclusive appeal. Seems all too familiar, considering every damn tech startup under the sun now seems to go "trick investors or public funds" -> "corner market" -> "enshittifcation"
If someone else has some better info - go ahead and correct me, but there seems to be no mention of monetisation of Google before their targeted ad rollout.
i love your post
Same way Uber lost money for 7 years straight. Investors.
That doesn't look like an ad, but a section in a (probably) tech magazine where they introduce useful or interesting websites to their readers.
Alternate reality
Oh the irony
It's a trap!
I was in university then and we actually used Yahoo mostly to learn about how to search (back then with boolean operators and other things). I don't recall covering google. I think maybe we had Alta-Vista as well? Of course, Archie, Veronica, etc. were still taught as well.
Oh how the dystopian tables have turned
I saw a post that said the same thing about duckduckgo a couple of days ago