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I'm very surprised to see this downvoted to -4. So, the actual history is that they came up with the technology first, and when they needed to monetize, they w

I'm very surprised to see this downvoted to -4. So, the actual history is that they came up with the technology first, and when they needed to monetize, they were against the invasive banner ads at the time, introducing text ads instead. Google has been about technological innovation (for example, the introduction of maps was a technological innovation and then required massive acquisition of map sources) and they have done huge amounts of technical work. They've scanned millions of books, turning one page after another. The idea that Google's core DNA is advertising is simply laughable on its face.

musage 9y ago
Being against banner and for text ads is still monetizing through advertising from day #1. And on some level, even a full screen, brightly flashing, dumb banner ad that gets displayed randomly or to every visitor, could be argued to be less invasive on a certain level than the user tracking, micro-auctioning, RAM and CPU cycles gobbling stuff that's the norm now. It's also easier to distinguish a banner from an item on a list of text items, contrast that to barely visited "sponsored content" headers over an text item designed to blend in. So that's laying it on quite thickly even before you get to "turning one page after another". Tuning out banner ads is easier than tuning out text, and blocking images based on their dimensions (banner ads came in a bunch of dimensions mostly) was a thing before ad blockers were. They maybe said some nice things and maybe you believe those things, but if we look at the actions and don't equate "technical work" with a little girl selling matches in the freezing cold just once, I'm not seeing any of it. That they didn't have ads before monetizing (like someone by definition would "not have soda" before they "have any sort of liquid at all"), and that that don't just display ads, but also make things to monetize, goes without saying, rather than being this huge rebuttal.

musage 9y ago

Being against banner and for text ads is still monetizing through advertising from day #1. And on some level, even a full screen, brightly flashing, dumb banner ad that gets displayed randomly or to every visitor, could be argued to be less invasive on a certain level than the user tracking, micro-auctioning, RAM and CPU cycles gobbling stuff that's the norm now. It's also easier to distinguish a banner from an item on a list of text items, contrast that to barely visited "sponsored content" headers over an text item designed to blend in. So that's laying it on quite thickly even before you get to "turning one page after another". Tuning out banner ads is easier than tuning out text, and blocking images based on their dimensions (banner ads came in a bunch of dimensions mostly) was a thing before ad blockers were. They maybe said some nice things and maybe you believe those things, but if we look at the actions and don't equate "technical work" with a little girl selling matches in the freezing cold just once, I'm not seeing any of it. That they didn't have ads before monetizing (like someone by definition would "not have soda" before they "have any sort of liquid at all"), and that that don't just display ads, but also make things to monetize, goes without saying, rather than being this huge rebuttal.