This was the venture funding "we're a startup era". And Google succeeded eventually.
But in that era making money didn't matter. It was just about grabbing market space. And oh boy did they succeed.
But all bills become due eventually. Stock holders start demanding continuing increasing profit and that eventually leads to the downfall of any good product.
It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you.
Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.
I remember being clever at school and showing off that if you typed "nukes" it would display an advert for ebay down the right-side. "Buy Nukes on EBay".
They had plenty of success with the ads that didn't disrupt the main results until they decided that search results didn't matter and selling their users to malware was more profitable.
For many years they were very profitable, with great search results and good quality ads.
But like always they didn't stop once they were a bit profitable with a few ads, instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market, I have wonder if there can exist some variant of capitalism that punishes becoming a bit too greedy, like a soft ceiling (tied to the minimum wage) over which most of the profits go to taxes, and a hard one where all profits over that go to taxes plus mandatory social work by its owners/executives.
The same way any tech company works now: use investor money to offer things for free or unrealistically cheap until you corner the market, and once your competitors are no longer relevant you start milking every buck you can.
geuis|5 months ago
This was the venture funding "we're a startup era". And Google succeeded eventually.
But in that era making money didn't matter. It was just about grabbing market space. And oh boy did they succeed.
But all bills become due eventually. Stock holders start demanding continuing increasing profit and that eventually leads to the downfall of any good product.
eru|5 months ago
Don't blame ordinary shareholders here! The original founders still hold a majority of decision making power (I think via super voting shares).
peab|5 months ago
justapassenger|5 months ago
Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.
doublerabbit|5 months ago
marcosdumay|5 months ago
For many years they were very profitable, with great search results and good quality ads.
mattigames|5 months ago
DougBTX|5 months ago
2000, launched ads: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ads
2001, profitable: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/aug/08/internetn...
input_sh|5 months ago
smt88|5 months ago
stevage|5 months ago
joenot443|5 months ago
It seems the only things certain in this industry are death, tax, ads, and graphics cards.
zugi|5 months ago