5 ms·

I understand what you are trying to say. But all the products you mentioned generates revenue through ads, both directly and indirectly. Google still makes more

by pavs 9y ago

I understand what you are trying to say. But all the products you mentioned generates revenue through ads, both directly and indirectly. Google still makes more than 90% of their revenue from ads. Yes, they are trying to diversify for some time now, maybe they will succeed. but they are not there yet. Most of their current brainshare works on products that make money from ads both directly and indirectly.

ddorian43 9y ago
Is it wrong if a hospital makes money from ads?
- pavs 9y ago
  I would hope so, considering they probably would be sharing patient personal information for relevant ads.
CydeWeys 9y ago
We're not talking about where revenue comes from, we're talking about what products engineers are working on. The vast majority of engineering effort at Google is on products like the ones I mentioned, not ads, and it's insulting to Jeff Dean and others to imply that they're not doing anything other than serving up ads. Search, Maps, Android, etc., are all incredibly useful and technically challenging products, and Jeff Dean's code and inventions are used in all of them.
- pavs 9y ago
  I understand what you are saying. But the issue is not so black or white. Google/Alphabet is not pouring billions of dollars on free products from the goodness of their heart, they are doing so increase their revenue from ADs. As matter of fact, I would think that most of their ad revenue does not come from direct ad products, but indirectly from other products. Whether ads are ok or not is a different argument (I don't have any problems with Ads as long as they are not too annoying), but the feeling of righteousness is something I can't understand. Please understand Google is a for-profit public-traded company, with the only objective of making money for their shareholders (nothing wrong with that), but to imply they have all these free products without any hidden revenue agenda (is, mostly Ads), is just ridiculous.
  - rajivm 9y ago
    I don't think @CydeWeis was dismissing the revenue motivation, but rather stating that the engineering resources themselves are being poured into other innovative products that users love, not just into AdTech, even if these products are primarily motivated by ad revenue for Google, the company. Individual engineers, like Jeff Dean, may also have different motivations than the publicly traded company for doing the work they do. It's likely the engineers working on Maps, etc. and the underlying tech would not see their work as simply "AdTech."
    - pavs 9y ago
      It's absolutely very likely that individual, well-respected developers, and engineers are working on cool things in the company that directly has nothing to do with ads. I have nothing against those individuals or those products or even google for that matter. But the business model is much more complicated than that. Their product is their vessel for ad money, you can't mention one without talking about the other. So when someone says: > vast majority of Google's products that aren't ads, like Search, Maps, Android, Gmail. It's a very simplistic view of how Google business model works. Because AFAIK, only 3 Google products are directly ads related, but ~90% of their other products exist for the sole purpose of driving business to their ads products. ie, Machine learning in adsense: https://adsense.googleblog.com/2018/02/introducing-adsense-auto-ads.html https://adsense.googleblog.com/2018/02/introducing-adsense-a...
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        > but ~90% of their other products exist for the sole purpose of driving business to their ads products. This is flatly false. While certainly, many of the products are used in ads, yes, very few products exist for the sole purpose of driving ads business. A few examples of things that don't: Drive, Docs, Gmail (GSuite/B2B), GCE (B2B again), ML, TF, etc. (again, B2B offerings, as well as being used for all sorts of internal things that have nothing to do with ads), Youtube (Red, TV), etc. While many things certainly drive ads revenue, there are very few things that you could argue exist solely, or even mostly, to drive ads revenue. (Am Googler)

by pavs 9y ago

ddorian43 9y ago

Is it wrong if a hospital makes money from ads?

pavs 9y ago
I would hope so, considering they probably would be sharing patient personal information for relevant ads.

CydeWeys 9y ago

We're not talking about where revenue comes from, we're talking about what products engineers are working on. The vast majority of engineering effort at Google is on products like the ones I mentioned, not ads, and it's insulting to Jeff Dean and others to imply that they're not doing anything other than serving up ads. Search, Maps, Android, etc., are all incredibly useful and technically challenging products, and Jeff Dean's code and inventions are used in all of them.

pavs 9y ago
I understand what you are saying. But the issue is not so black or white. Google/Alphabet is not pouring billions of dollars on free products from the goodness of their heart, they are doing so increase their revenue from ADs. As matter of fact, I would think that most of their ad revenue does not come from direct ad products, but indirectly from other products. Whether ads are ok or not is a different argument (I don't have any problems with Ads as long as they are not too annoying), but the feeling of righteousness is something I can't understand. Please understand Google is a for-profit public-traded company, with the only objective of making money for their shareholders (nothing wrong with that), but to imply they have all these free products without any hidden revenue agenda (is, mostly Ads), is just ridiculous.
- rajivm 9y ago
  I don't think @CydeWeis was dismissing the revenue motivation, but rather stating that the engineering resources themselves are being poured into other innovative products that users love, not just into AdTech, even if these products are primarily motivated by ad revenue for Google, the company. Individual engineers, like Jeff Dean, may also have different motivations than the publicly traded company for doing the work they do. It's likely the engineers working on Maps, etc. and the underlying tech would not see their work as simply "AdTech."
  - pavs 9y ago
    It's absolutely very likely that individual, well-respected developers, and engineers are working on cool things in the company that directly has nothing to do with ads. I have nothing against those individuals or those products or even google for that matter. But the business model is much more complicated than that. Their product is their vessel for ad money, you can't mention one without talking about the other. So when someone says: > vast majority of Google's products that aren't ads, like Search, Maps, Android, Gmail. It's a very simplistic view of how Google business model works. Because AFAIK, only 3 Google products are directly ads related, but ~90% of their other products exist for the sole purpose of driving business to their ads products. ie, Machine learning in adsense: https://adsense.googleblog.com/2018/02/introducing-adsense-auto-ads.html https://adsense.googleblog.com/2018/02/introducing-adsense-a...
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      > but ~90% of their other products exist for the sole purpose of driving business to their ads products. This is flatly false. While certainly, many of the products are used in ads, yes, very few products exist for the sole purpose of driving ads business. A few examples of things that don't: Drive, Docs, Gmail (GSuite/B2B), GCE (B2B again), ML, TF, etc. (again, B2B offerings, as well as being used for all sorts of internal things that have nothing to do with ads), Youtube (Red, TV), etc. While many things certainly drive ads revenue, there are very few things that you could argue exist solely, or even mostly, to drive ads revenue. (Am Googler)