3 ms·

Additional revenue? I thought go.com/overture had an actual CPC business model long before Google.

nostrademons 8y ago
The self-serve AdWords business models didn't launch until late 2000. There's an account of its early days (by HN user 'lisper') here: http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html One of my projects at Google was the [google in 1998] Easter egg, which actually shows a SRP from early 1999. I got the mockup because Jeff Dean happened to have some old mockups of what Ads might look like lying around on his computer. They hadn't launched at the time. Before that, Google's revenue was largely partnerships and one-off deals. They'd offer to provide search for some large Internet property in exchange for a large lump sum, the way most business was done at the time. The auction came later - IIRC it was invented in 2000, and its inventors got one of the first Founders Awards. The way I heard it, upper management was aware of GoTo.com and it was a major factor in the pivot into the CPC auction business model, but GoTo.com was hardly a household name. I'd never heard of them until I joined Google (many years later) and started looking into the history of my employer, and their business model was white-labeled advertising for the other major search engines & portals (Yahoo, Altavista, etc.)
- abraham_lincoln 8y ago
  Goto.com was collecting revenue on CPC in 1998 according to wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Yes, they were. Collecting revenue != common wisdom holds that their business model is a good idea. I recall that even at the IPO, there was widespread surprise that Google had been profitable since 2001, as most people had assumed they must be losing money. There are wide information disparities and a long time lag between something becoming actually true and when it enters common wisdom. Heck, I can think of a couple cryptocurrency companies that made over a billion dollars in revenue (revenue, not valuation) last year and yet a good portion of the planet still thinks crypto is a fad or pyramid scheme.

The self-serve AdWords business models didn't launch until late 2000. There's an account of its early days (by HN user 'lisper') here: http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html One of my projects at Google was the [google in 1998] Easter egg, which actually shows a SRP from early 1999. I got the mockup because Jeff Dean happened to have some old mockups of what Ads might look like lying around on his computer. They hadn't launched at the time. Before that, Google's revenue was largely partnerships and one-off deals. They'd offer to provide search for some large Internet property in exchange for a large lump sum, the way most business was done at the time. The auction came later - IIRC it was invented in 2000, and its inventors got one of the first Founders Awards. The way I heard it, upper management was aware of GoTo.com and it was a major factor in the pivot into the CPC auction business model, but GoTo.com was hardly a household name. I'd never heard of them until I joined Google (many years later) and started looking into the history of my employer, and their business model was white-labeled advertising for the other major search engines & portals (Yahoo, Altavista, etc.)

abraham_lincoln 8y ago
Goto.com was collecting revenue on CPC in 1998 according to wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Yes, they were. Collecting revenue != common wisdom holds that their business model is a good idea. I recall that even at the IPO, there was widespread surprise that Google had been profitable since 2001, as most people had assumed they must be losing money. There are wide information disparities and a long time lag between something becoming actually true and when it enters common wisdom. Heck, I can think of a couple cryptocurrency companies that made over a billion dollars in revenue (revenue, not valuation) last year and yet a good portion of the planet still thinks crypto is a fad or pyramid scheme.